My Swiss National Science Foundation Ambizione project has officially begun! I’m now at the ETH Zurich, working with the SPUR group – Spatial Development and Urban Policy. This is a great interdisciplinary team and I am thrilled to be here. The interdisciplinary nature of the group means that I’m returning to a beginner mind in some situations. It’s a great feeling – albeit a little destabilizing sometimes – to encounter entirely new debates in bodies of literature I’ve never even touched. I feel very fortunate to be able to learn new things. This is of course one of the goals of the SNSF career grant: to establish new competencies in new directions, in the context of my current realms of expertise.

This process also brings to mind how tough it can be to engage the opportunities inherent in interdisciplinary research. If we don’t want to remain in disciplinary silos, and if we don’t want “interdisciplinary” to be simply a checkbox to mark off on a grant application, I think the process of interchange has to make space for the basic fact that we have different vocabularies, different concerns, different approaches, and different goals.

I want to work within that difference and leverage it in order to discover new ways of knowing and doing. New things to learn. New articles and books to write. It’s a really exciting time. Stay tuned!