ESRS Summer School 2026

Hosted by the Faculty of Social Sciences at Rīga Stradiņš University, the summer school supports participants in developing their research skills and exploring the social dimensions of rural digitalisation through an interdisciplinary lens.

About the Summer School

Digital technologies are increasingly shaping how rural communities organise services, manage resources, and imagine their futures. From artificial intelligence to digital platforms and data-driven governance tools, they are often presented as pathways toward more resilient and sustainable rural development. At the same time, digital transformation can also introduce new challenges — reinforcing inequalities, reshaping local practices, and creating tensions between technological solutions and social realities.

For researchers working on rural change, this creates a complex field of opportunities and uncertainties. The ESRS Summer School is designed to support participants in better understanding and working within this landscape, helping them to critically engage with the promises and limits of digitalisation and to develop research approaches that are attentive to its social dimensions.

What We Aim to Explore

The ESRS Doctoral Summer School 2026 invites doctoral students and early career researchers to critically engage with the social, methodological, and governance dimensions of rural digitalisation from an interdisciplinary perspective.

The programme brings together perspectives from fields such as sociology, geography, policy studies, innovation studies, and digital research in order to address shared challenges in studying rural digital change. These include questions of how qualitative findings can become meaningful beyond single case studies, how digital practices can be examined through methods such as digital ethnography, and how digitalisation is shaped through multi-actor processes and policy environments.

Participants will be invited to develop their own research ideas in dialogue with peers and mentors, with attention to issues such as transparency in qualitative research, the transferability of findings, and the social implications of digital transformation in rural contexts.

Key Addressed in the Summer School

Participants will engage with questions related to local innovation ecosystems, participatory governance, sustainability transitions, and the everyday practices through which digitalisation takes shape in rural contexts. Particular attention will be given to how digital transformation unfolds beyond large-scale technological investments, including within small enterprises, community initiatives, and local networks.

The programme will also create space for epistemological reflection on how research findings travel across contexts. Participants will be invited to consider what locally grounded insights mean beyond the specific settings in which they emerge, and how qualitative research can be made analytically transparent and relevant to broader debates.

This includes attention to methodological questions such as how to work with findings in ways that avoid isolated case-based conclusions and instead contribute to comparative and transferable understanding. Issues of transparency and interpretative robustness will be explored alongside opportunities for peer mentoring and research-focused supervision.

Participants will engage with approaches such as digital ethnography and storytelling to examine how rural actors — including small businesses and community initiatives — use digital platforms in their everyday practices. In doing so, the programme will highlight how digitalisation often develops through accessible and socially embedded pathways, rather than solely through large-scale technological investments.

The summer school will explore how digital processes are built in practice, including through participatory and multi-actor collaborations that bring together local knowledge, institutional frameworks, and technological expertise. This also opens questions about the role of digitalisation within rural governance and development strategies, and how policy environments shape the space for digital innovation.

Finally, the programme will invite critical reflection on the transformative claims associated with digitalisation. Participants will explore preliminary outcomes and impacts of digital change in rural areas and consider what the social sciences can meaningfully contribute to understanding not only what digitalisation does, but why and for whom it matters.

Featured Speakers

• Carlo Giua is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Pisa working on rural development, digital innovation, and agrifood systems. His research focuses on the diffusion and scaling of digital technologies in agriculture and on rural innovation ecosystems, particularly through participatory and multi-actor approaches developed within several Horizon projects. Over the years, he has also engaged with rural innovation beyond academia, including consultancy activities as well as dissemination and knowledge-exchange initiatives supporting policy and practice in rural development.
• Koen Salemink is an Assistant Professor in Rural and Cultural Geography at the Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Koen aims to combine insights from economic, social, and cultural geographies to better understand how rural and small-town communities address social and digital exclusion. His work has appeared in the Journal of Rural Studies, Sociologia Ruralis, Environment and Planning A, and International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. He is also a European Editor for Local Economy.
• Leanne Townsend is a Senior Social Researcher and Group Lead of the "Society, People and Nature" group at the James Hutton Institute in Scotland. With over a decade of experience in rural digitalisation, her work adopts multiple perspectives to explore how digital tools shape rural community life, nature-based practices and economic development. She is currently researching the role of digitalisation in the resilience of small and diversifying farms; how small rural nature-based businesses adopt digital tools to strengthen and promote their practices; and how participatory digital methods can support stewardship and community engagement in rural nature-based initiatives.
• Sandija Zēverte-Rivža is an Associate Professor and Lead Researcher at the Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies, where she also leads the doctoral study programme “Agrarian and Regional Economics”. Her research focuses on digital transformation in agriculture, rural entrepreneurship, and the wider bioeconomy, with particular attention to how digital solutions can support innovation, competitiveness, and sustainability in rural areas. She has contributed to several national and international research projects addressing digitalisation in rural development, agricultural systems, and enterprise-level transformation. Alongside her own research, she is actively involved in doctoral supervision, advising PhD students working on digitalisation-related topics, including digital transformation in rural tourism enterprises and broader rural entrepreneurship contexts.

Programme

Outline

Location & Practical Information

The summer school will take place at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Rīga Stradiņš University, 9c Kuldīgas iela, Rīga, Latvia, from 6 to 10 July 2026.

Participation in the summer school is free of charge and no participation fee will be required. The costs of accommodation and lunches during the summer school will be covered by the organisers.

Participants are expected to arrange and cover their own travel to and from Rīga.

Publication Opportunity

Journal of Rural Studies Special Issue

We are delighted to announce an exciting publication opportunity connected to the ESRS Doctoral Summer School 2026. Participants will have the opportunity to contribute to a forthcoming special issue of the Journal of Rural Studies entitled “Artificial Rural Intelligence? Rethinking Expertise, Technology, and Rural Futures.” The Journal of Rural Studies is one of the leading international interdisciplinary journals dedicated to research on rural societies, development, and transformations.

Call for papers

For further information, please contact:

Jānis Šabanovs

Acting Researcher, Faculty of Social Sciences
Doctoral student

Faculty of Social Sciences

9c Kuldīgas iela, Rīga

+37122468682

janis.sabanovs@rsu.lv