Excellence award for planning postgrad

A part-time postgraduate planning student in the School of the Environment has been awarded an Emerald Literati Network Award for Excellence for a paper he had published in the Journal of Place Management and Development.

Bjoern Jacobsen's submission, Investor-based place brand equity:a theoretical framework, was judged one of the best published in 2010.

Tony Jackson, a senior lecturer in Town and Regional Planning, described Bjoern's work as at "the cutting edge" of academic research in his field.

"He is trying to establish what returns if any can be identified from the money spent by city councils and related bodies in marketing their communities as places for inward investment and has constructed a novel analytical framework to this end.

"He is an exemplary doctoral student and the fact that he has achieved this award as a part-time doctoral student while holding down a full-time job and with a family, indicates how good he is."