Author: Sven Daniel Wolfe
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Postcolonial Ukraine and Russia’s Imperial Ambition. Open lecture at University of Zurich
It’s not easy to talk about the war, as it implicates my family – deeply – in a variety of dimensions. But I was grateful that Benedikt Korf (Political Geography, UZH) invited me to talk to his bachelor students about this. It turned into an open lecture and a full house, which was very nice…
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Building an internal city to manage geopolitical trauma
How can I make sense of the ongoing atrocities in Ukraine? Each day we awake and write to family and friends (in Kamianske, Kharkiv, Kyiv…) to make sure they’re still alive. It’s a grim ritual. I don’t want to ask them to write back if they don’t have the capacity, either emotional or material. But…
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Talking about sustainable Olympics on Deutsche Welle television
This was fun. I really appreciated the fact that Biresh Banerjee – a very good and thoughtful host – gave a lot of time to the issues. This stuff is nuanced and it takes time to get it right. And I was stunned that DW left my whole segment uncut. Every other interview I’ve done…
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An extremely happy new year to you and yours
So I published a book! It looks like this: And I know it’s not perfect by any means, and I’d love to have a go at bringing some of the chapters more in line with my current thinking. But that’s the way this game is played, and I have to admit that I am overjoyed…
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Book review: Global Finance, Local Control – by Igor Logvinenko
I love book reviews. I love reading them and I love writing them. Reading them is great – in a world where so much amazing research is published every day, it seems impossible to keep up. But book reviews help make that work easier. Frankly I wish ordinary academic articles would have a digest like…
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The absolutely last virtual talk of 2021: Paris / Tokyo / Mega-Events
Usually, when I give a talk, I’m sharing work in progress. The conference is, for me, a way to share my ideas, to learn who else is working on similar directions, and hopefully to fill in some of the gaps in my work as I get it ready for writing. This time, however, it was…
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Between the minor and the intimate. New publication in Geopolitics!
I’m extremely happy with this article. It was a tough road but a valuable one. The seed was planted by the excellent Michele Lancione, who I was lucky enough to meet at a workshop in Neuchâtel in 2019. Michele introduced me to his approach to micropolitics and minor ethics, which he’d written about back in…
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After the spotlight: Sustainable urban development and geopolitical legacies in former mega-event cities
I submitted my Ambizione project to the Swiss National Science Foundation. Definitely a massive effort! My earlier investigation of submission and acceptance data means that I’m under no illusions about my odds, but I admit that I have hope and am excited about the potential here. Overall, the project is designed to take my existing…
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Russia, Marseille, and the Geopolitics of Sport at Many Scales
Note: this is the second time (!) something like this has happened. As before, I was approached to write a commentary for a non peer-reviewed expert journal – a different one this time. As before, and I still have no idea why, the editor never wrote back after commissioning and receiving the piece. Did I…