Ms Heidi Vironen

Personal statement

Heidi joined the European Policies Research Centre in 2006 with a responsibility for the research of national regional development policies and the implementation of Structural Funds programmes in Finland and Sweden. Prior to that, she worked at a Brussels-based think-tank as a project manager for policy debates and publications.

Heidi Vironen (EPRC) is a Senior Knowledge Exchange and Research Fellow in the European Policies Research Centre (EPRC), and the Network Manager of the European Regional Policy Research Consortium (EoRPA). Her research focuses on EPRC's two main research programmes, EoRPA and IQ-Net, researching the design and implementation of national regional development policies, and the implementation of Structural Funds in Finland and Sweden. In addition, she specialises in territorial cooperation, with a particular emphasis on the Nordic countries. She is currently working on an impact evaluation of the Northern Periphery and the Arctic programme and involved in an ESPON project on Territorial Evidence Support for ETC Programmes as part of a wider consortium. She has been involved in a number of major evaluations and research studies related to territorial cooperation, including a study on the impacts of INTERREG in the UK; ex ante and ongoing evaluations of the 2007-13 Northern Periphery, and 2014-20 Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme; ex ante evaluation of the North Sea Programme; the assessment of territorial cooperation programmes in Scotland; the ESPON project on 'European Territorial Cooperation as a Factor of Growth, Jobs and Quality of Life’; as well as studies related to the regional cooperation in the Arctic. Other key areas of research include the ex post evaluation of gender equality and demographic change in northern Sweden;  the analysis of the impact of Structural Fund programmes in Scotland as well as the analysis of EU funding and policy support structures more generally.