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Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · 5d

The next workshop of the @regstud.bsky.social Women’s Network is coming up ahead of the Winter Conference 🎉 We have options to attend in person and online. More details and registration link here:
www.regionalstudies.org/events/rsa-w...

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Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · 15d

Thanks! My reviews are possibly a little on the late side 😬 so the papers were definitly submitted before that... But maybe there was a bug that the update fixed?!

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Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · 15d

I'm reviewing the second paper today (🫠) that is consistently missing spaces before citation brackets. Is this a new ChatGPT thing? An attempt to reduce word count?? Anybody have an idea what this might be about?

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Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · 26d

The second visit in a Georgian museum funded with European money, this time Horizon, in which we are the only visitors. The exhibition is excellent but maybe there’s a science policy lesson here to give some money also to the marketing folks!

Exhibit in the State Silk Museum, Tbilisi

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Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · 28d

The Smitten Kitchen zucchini lasagne is very good and it uses something like 2kg!

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Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · Aug 11

Why do they need to know this stuff? and HMRC already know all of this’ are pretty legitimate points but the questionnaires are designed with professionals in mind, ‘you’re legally obliged to respond’ doesn’t have much weight, doesn’t mean you have to give a good answer or put much effort into it.

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Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · Aug 11

My husband’s business is in the Monthly Business Survey, it’s like 5 questions to which he responds with a somewhat educated guess. They’re still really hard questions if you don’t have someone geeking over your shoulder who looks at this data for a living.

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Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · Aug 11

For business statistics at least, I think it’s also the changing make up of businesses that makes it harder. Micro business are under-sampled but still make up the bulk and they don’t have the fancy management accounting systems to respond to surveys.

Tony Yates @t0nyyates.bsky.social · Aug 11

The ONS got caught in a perfect storm. Post 2010 austerity. Moving to somewhere professional statisticians and economists have few outside options. The decline in survey response rates [hardly their fault]. The shift to weightless and online economy [a difficulty and an opportunity].

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Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · Aug 8

For a summary of the paper, the @e-r-c.bsky.social very kindly featured our research on SME digitalisation and business survival on their blog: www.enterpriseresearch.ac.uk/did-digital-...

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Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · Aug 7

I wish I could show this to the elderly couple who got cross with my 2-year-old for climbing on the Paddington Bear statue because they wanted to take selfies with it 🙄

Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · Aug 7

“I promised myself that if I ever got to the other side of it, if it ever got easier, I would view small moments of personal inconvenience in service of our shared humanity and inclusion as a sacrifice I am grateful to make.”

Children's Spaces With No Children

Have we lost our very minds?

open.substack.com

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Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · Aug 1

OMG I copy-pasted the tweet below into LinkedIn and it translated 🤷‍♀️ into the male version with a female sign 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

Incidentally, the same thread got 17 likes in the same time on LinkedIn as opposed to 1 here! Please don’t make me use that awful site 😫

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Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · Aug 1

Why do we observe these differences between urban and rural areas? Not sure 🤷‍♀️ We looked at differences in broadband speeds, and it's not that. It's also not a London effect. Our best guess is unobservable differences + access to skills + complementary services 👉 more research needed, yay!

Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · Aug 1

Some churn during a crisis is not always bad for productivity, if it weeds out unproductive businesses that would have gone out of business sooner or later anyways. The businesses seizing trading in rural areas were much less productive, so increased survival would have dragged down productivity.

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Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · Aug 1

What do we find? Yes, digitalisation prior to the pandemic help businesses weather the storm, but this is only true for businesses in urban areas. We see no effect for rural businesses.

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Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · Aug 1

Digital technologies were crucial to keep the world running during pandemic lockdowns. But did prior experience with these tools actually help businesses survive during the pandemic 🤔 Sabine D'Costa and I look at this in a new working paper for @productivity.bsky.social 👇

The Productivity Institute @productivity.bsky.social · Jul 28

Can digitalisation help firms survive economic shocks?
New research from The Productivity Institute by Sabine D'Costa and @ioramashvili.bsky.social explores how digital tools affect firm resilience and how their impact varies between urban & rural.
Read more: www.productivity.ac.uk/research/doe...

Does digitalisation increase firm survival? Evidence from British SMEs during the Covid-19 crisis - The Productivity Institute

A Working Paper investigating whether pre-pandemic adoption of digital technologies helped SMEs survive during the pandemic, and whether this effect differs between urban and rural areas.

www.productivity.ac.uk

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Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · Jul 12

I got very confused at this as there’s also a Lullington Garth in North London with similar vibes. How can there be two roads with that ridiculous name?!

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Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · Jul 11

Kind of how the e-visa/settled status/leave to remain thing works, and it seems to work reasonably well with airport staff anywhere in the world.

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Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · Jul 9

I didn’t realise Penguin was in fact run by penguins, but that explains a lot

Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · Jul 6

The kid also had her first hair cut and mani today 🥹

Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · Jul 6

Winning at working parenting today as I accurately predicted the timing of a long nap, identified the right café to plonk myself in and had the foresight to pack my laptop. 500 words on the page 💪

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Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · Jun 30

A day of ‘you need to close the blinds, actually’ discourse on Bluesky and this is what the neighbours came up with 🤔

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Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · Jun 18

Somewhat relatedly, a civil servant asked me what my favourite innovation policy was 🥴 That's not how it works!

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Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · May 30

And a lovely mention of our Women’s Network workshop, which I didn’t know the history to!

RSA Blog @rsablog.bsky.social · May 29

🧭 Exploring Regions, Sustainability & Inclusivity
The 2025 RSA Annual Conference in Porto brought together nearly 900 scholars—a record event!
Helen Lawton Smith shares reflections on the big debates shaping regional research.
📖 Read: bit.ly/43FLpQg
@regstud.bsky.social @regionalstudies.bsky.social

Exploring regions, sustainability and inclusivity: Insights from Porto - RSA Main

The Regional Studies Association (RSA) Annual Conference 2025, held in Porto from May 6 to 9, brought together nearly 900 scholars, marking the largest gathering in RSA history. The event showcased di...

bit.ly

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Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · May 30

Oh god 😱

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Carolin Ioramashvili @ioramashvili.bsky.social · May 9

A good end to #RSA2025 😁

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