Author: Sven Daniel Wolfe
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The end of the blog: so long and thanks
It’s been a lovely run but it’s time to retire this informal platform. Not that I’ve had an enormous number of readers or anything, but enough people got in touch over the years that it seemed worthwhile to continue. And it helped me make sense of my path and growth as a geographer, from long…
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Conference organizing lessons from the Human Geography subculture at the 2023 Swiss Geosciences Meeting
After conferences, I often write here about lessons learned (like on the 2019 SGM in Fribourg). This weekend, I learned more than usual. This weekend I learned an awful lot. One of my tasks as new VP of the Swiss Association of Geography is to organize the human geography contributions at the annual Swiss Geosciences…
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Interview with SWI Swissinfo: Can Switzerland host a “sustainable” Olympics?
I gave a quick interview to SWI swissinfo.ch on the feasibility of hosting a sustainable Winter Olympics here in Switzerland. The basic idea is to ditch the idea of a host city and go towards something like a host country. One advantage of this would be that you could use only existing infrastructures and eliminate…
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A quick summary of my keynote in Riga: Ethics and the everyday in times of global crisis
Last week I had the pleasure and honor of giving the Eurasian Geography and Economics keynote lecture at the 10th International Urban Geographies of Post-Communist States conference. This year it was in Riga – my first time there. The opening was held in this gorgeous Stalinka that has been mostly de-Sovietized. It was a very…
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New Op-Ed: Updating the Olympic Charter is a dangerous game
I feel weird about posting anything on Ex-Twitter nowadays. Truthfully I’m not overly comfortable with most of the self-promotion game, but I’m always grateful when someone else shares their work and even better if they share a bit of the self behind the name. So that’s what I try to do too, even though it…
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A quick look at my keynote in Mendrisio: mega-events and marginalities, substance and spectacle
Earlier this month I was invited to give a keynote at a symposium in at the Università della Svizzera italiana in Mendrisio, called Marginal urbanities: The hidden face of planetary urbanisation. It was organized by Mosè Cometta and Giulia Scotto, two wonderful scholars who did a great job putting together the program. It was broad…
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Investigating mega-event host cities after the spotlight
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…
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New Article: The Intimate and Everyday Geopolitics of the Russian War Against Ukraine
It’s out in the world. This piece is the final product of the collaboration I wrote about a little while back, co-written with Olena Denysenko, Dina Krichker, Olga Rebro, and Maria Gunko. In contrast to the abstractions of global headlines, we focus on the micro perspectives of everyday lived experience. One theme running through all…
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Interview: the (un)sustainability of the Olympic Games
I had the opportunity to talk about mega-events and (un)sustainability, particularly in context with the upcoming Paris 2024 Games. The journalist, Théo Nepipvoda, gave me plenty of time and space, which is always a nice feeling. I thought that I would be a small contribution to an article, and didn’t know that it would end…
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Submitting a new collaboration on the Russian war against Ukraine
As part of my current project, I’ve just submitted a draft of a new piece called The Intimate and Everyday Geopolitics of the Russian War Against Ukraine. It’s a Forum collection for Geopolitics, and at this point I’m very pleased with it. Writing about the war during the war has not been easy. I gathered…