Blog

Postcolonial Ukraine and Russia’s Imperial Ambition. Open lecture at University of Zurich

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 to see, despite the circumstances. It was an honor, truly. And it felt good to be able to speak about it in a professional sense,…

Read More Read More

Building an internal city to manage geopolitical trauma

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 I can see when my messages are read, and that means something. A friend in Kharkiv has no electricity and no water, but he wrote…

Read More Read More

Talking about sustainable Olympics on Deutsche Welle television

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 (whether print, radio, or TV), the majority gets cut from the final production. Once, I gave a 20 minute interview for a TV station that…

Read More Read More

An extremely happy new year to you and yours

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 at holding an actual copy in my actual hands. You can get a copy here, at the fine and wonderful publisher. Or, if you’d like,…

Read More Read More

Book review: Global Finance, Local Control – by Igor Logvinenko

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 this as well. Sure, it’s depressing that our world is so rapid that we aren’t given the time to sit back and enjoy reading articles….

Read More Read More

The absolutely last virtual talk of 2021: Paris / Tokyo / Mega-Events

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 something new. I spoke at a conference called “Olympic Games and Global Cities”, organized by the Fondation France-Japon at l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences…

Read More Read More

Imprisoned for a retweet: Swiss Geoscience Meeting 2021

Imprisoned for a retweet: Swiss Geoscience Meeting 2021

I’m not going to lie – I miss the energy of conferences in real life. I’ve given a lot of talks this year, and while I’m grateful for the opportunities that virtual participation gives you, I find it increasingly hard to focus during these marathon online conferences. A happy exception to this trend was the session organized by my friend Dennis Pauschinger at this year’s Swiss Geoscience Meeting in virtual Geneva. Dennis hosted a session called “Policing the city: State…

Read More Read More

Between the minor and the intimate. New publication in Geopolitics!

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 2017. I’d missed that article, unfortunately, but was deeply moved and inspired by his talk and by our later conversations. After our meeting, I returned…

Read More Read More

After the spotlight: Sustainable urban development and geopolitical legacies in former mega-event cities

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 experience in mega-events and investigate some important under-researched areas. At the same time, I’ve designed it to support and expand my knowledge and competencies in…

Read More Read More

Russia, Marseille, and the Geopolitics of Sport at Many Scales

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 write to check in? Of course. Has there been any response? Not the slightest. Rather bad form. I don’t let it ruin my day, but…

Read More Read More