Area studies (also regional studies) are interdisciplinary fields of research and scholarship pertaining to particular geographical, national/federal, or cultural regions. The term exists primarily as a general description for what are, in the practice of scholarship, many heterogeneous fields of research, encompassing both the social sciences and the humanities. Typical area study programs involve international relations, strategic studies, history, political science, political economy, cultural studies, languages, geography, literature, and other related disciplines. In contrast to cultural studies, area studies often include diaspora and emigration from the area.

Regional development is the provision of aid and other assistance to regions which are less economically developed. Regional development may be domestic or international in nature. The implications and scope of regional development may therefore vary in accordance with the definition of a region, and how the region and its boundaries are perceived internally and externally.

Local development is a theory in social sciences based on the identification and use of the resources and endogenous potentialities of a community, neighbourhood, city, municipality or equivalent. The local development approach considers the endogenous potentialities of territories. Economic and non economic factors influence local development processes. Among the non economic factors, social, cultural, historical, institutional, and geographical aspects can be decisive in the process of local economic development.

interested in issues of economic development and growth, conceptions of territory and its governance and in thorny problems of equity and injustice.