Project team

Adi Weidenfeld is an assistant professor at the Department of Innovation at the Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw. His research interests include interregional knowledge networks, regional diversification, innovation in tourism and tourist attractions. He is currently working on the OPUS project, funded by the National Science Centre, which focuses on knowledge networks in regions. Adi intensively studies the relationships between companies, regions and innovation processes from the perspective of evolutionary economic geography. He worked as a senior lecturer in the UK and completed a Marie Curie fellowship in Finland.

He has published over 140 academic papers, including over 40 articles (some in highly rated journals such as Regional Studies, Environment & Planning A, Environment & Planning C), as well as working papers, edited books (4), book chapters (14), research reports and conference papers (Regional Studies Association, American Association of Geographers, Institute of Small Business and Entrepreneurship, European Regional Science Association) on the above topics.

He has been involved in numerous research, enterprise and consultancy projects funded from external sources including the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Scottish Executive, Cardiff and Co, Welsh Government, Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCFW), Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), Research Councils UK and National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA).

Coordinator of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) for the School of Management. Member of the Academic Degrees, Research and Entrepreneurship Committee of the Cardiff Metropolitan University School of Management. Member of the Promotions Committee for Professors and Lecturers at Cardiff Metropolitan University.

Jakub Anusik is a PhD student, researcher and lecturer at the University of Lodz, specializing in political economy, European financial integration and comparative capitalism. He has participated in numerous projects of the National Science Centre (NCN), where he coordinated research on topics such as the international role of the euro, the impact of national economic institutions on EU integration and the impact of EU funds on regional innovation. His research interests include the political economy of European integration, models of differentiated integration and institutional and development economics.

His research has recently been published in a monograph entitled “Varieties of Capitalism and the Political Economy of Differentiated Integration in Europe,” co-authored with Prof. Rafał Riedel. Jakub has presented his work at leading international conferences such as ECPR and during seminars, including at the ARENA Center of European Studies at the University of Oslo. Samuel Gańko is a student at the University of Warsaw, Faculty of Philosophy, majoring in Bioethics. His master’s thesis is on the level of understanding of AI ethics in Polish start-ups. Other research interests include political philosophy, tourism, and ethics of new technologies.

He currently serves as an assistant researcher in the project, where his main duties are research work – conducting and research analysis of qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys in the project. He became interested in the problems of Polish tourism “by the way”, when he noticed a large niche in the amount of research on the current state of this sector of the economy.

Nick Clifton is a professor of economic geography and regional development at Cardiff Metropolitan University in the UK. His research interests include regional economics, small business and entrepreneurship, networks, business strategy, innovation and creativity, remote working and co-working spaces. He is particularly interested in how individuals and firms use networks to acquire knowledge and innovate. He has published over 140 academic papers, including over 45 research articles on these topics.

Nick has conducted research funded by Innovate UK (including the recent report on Innovation for the Circular Economy), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Scottish Executive, the Welsh Government, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCFW), the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), Research Councils UK and the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA).

He is currently the Research Excellence Framework (REF) Coordinator for UoA17 (Governance) at Cardiff Met where he led the REF2021 case study on SME development, which was assessed 3*. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and an Affiliate Member of the Centre for Research on Innovation (CIRCLE) at Lund University, Sweden. He also serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of Growth and Change: a journal of urban and regional policy, published by Wiley.

Rodolfo Baggio holds a Master of Science in Physics (MPhys) from the University of Milan and a PhD in Tourism Management from the University of Queensland, Australia. He has worked for over 20 years for leading companies in the information technology sector and is currently affiliated with Bocconi University in Milan, Italy, where he coordinates the Digital Strategies area of ​​the Master of Science in Economics and Tourism and is a Research Fellow at the Dondena Research Center for Social Dynamics and Public Policy.

Rodolfo actively researches and publishes in the fields of information technology, complexity theory and network analysis methods applied to tourism. He has given numerous courses and lectures at national and international levels, is a Fellow of the Italian Physical Society and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. In 2017, he received the Hannes Werthner Lifetime Achievement Award from IFITT (International Federation for Information Technology in Travel and Tourism).

Project consultants