Abstract
This volume has examined six cases of university engagement in peripheral regions. While these regions have often been overlooked in the mainstream literature on university-region dynamics because they do not readily offer up success stories, they do facilitate an exploration into the challenges and difficulties that arise at the intersection of the university and region.
Beginning with a theory rooted in institutionalist literature that depicts the university as a set of five ambiguities rather than as a coherent whole, the chapters have sought to apply the ambiguities of intention, causality, history, structure, and meaning to their regional context. In this conclusion, we pull together all six case studies, showing how each of them dissects and analyzes one or more of these ambiguities through a complementary theory, and in so doing delves deeply in the inter-nested and co-evolving systems of university, region, industry, and policy.
We argue further that by engaging with a wide range of complementary theories to interrogate these ambiguities and by providing insights valuable for both academics and practitioners, the volume as a whole represents an application of the methodology of analytic eclecticism.