This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. Exploring current debates on the topic, this book maps out an agenda for theory, research and practice about the role and function of small and medium-sized towns in various contexts and at different territorial scales. Chapters highlight new insights and approaches to studying small and medium-sized towns, moving beyond the ‘urban bias’ to provide nuanced thought on these spaces both in terms of their relation to larger cities, and in terms of implications related to their size.

Asking vital questions concerning the future directions of terrorism research, this topical Research Agenda dives into the current state, emerging methodologies and key trends of this emotive and controversial field.

How businesses can and are acting to redress social and environmental issues is a question of growing academic interest. Bringing together a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, this insightful Research Agenda evaluates the current state of the art of sustainability and business and assesses key challenges for the field.

Explaining why contemporary problematic phenomena require a more expansive understanding than what is allowed in conventional organizational studies scholarship, this forward-looking Research Agenda brings insights from recent feminist new materialisms and critical posthumanist theorizing into the field of organization studies.

This timely book utilises the specialised insights and experiences of those who have carried out research on different aspects of social welfare law and policy to construct an innovative post-Brexit and post-Covid 19 research agenda that identifies what needs to be studied and how this should be carried out.

Navigating Entrepreneurial Contexts highlights the critical importance of understanding and adapting entrepreneurship to the diverse contexts in which businesses operate. The heterogeneity of the topics covered in this book reflects the richness of theories and methods employed in this interdisciplinary field of study.

Compelling and engaging, this Handbook on Shrinking Cities addresses the fundamentals of shrinkage, exploring its causal factors, the ways in which planning strategies and policies are steered, and innovative solutions for revitalising shrinking cities. Chapters cover topics of governance, ‘greening’ and ‘right-sizing’, and regrowth, laying the relevant groundwork for the Handbook’s proposals for dealing with shrinkage in the age of COVID-19 and beyond.

Global in its outlook, this Research Agenda systematically reviews and critiques existing research on sustainable cities, calling for greater engagement with a diversity of perspectives. It interrogates foundational assumptions in the field and offers reframed perspectives on sustainability. Chapters also explore diverse approaches, actors and domains, locating emerging dynamics and new directions for practitioners.

This Research Agenda provides both a state-of-the-art review of existing research on city-regions, and expands on new research approaches. Expert contributors from across the globe explore key areas for reading city-regions, including: trade, services and people, regional differentiation, big data, global production networks, governance and policy, and regional development. The book focuses on developing a more integrated and systematic approach to reading city-regions as part of regeneration economics, identifying conceptual and methodological developments in this field of study.

Public diplomacy has become one of the central instruments of foreign policy and national security; this crucial Research Agenda provides a new outline for its investigation. Aiding the comprehension of the broad boundaries of the field, it proposes a clear starting point for contemporary research into important areas of public diplomacy.