Category: Academic Life
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Ambizione project: After the spotlight of hosting mega-events
As I wrote in my summary of 2022, I was fortunate enough to win a Swiss National Science Foundation Ambizione grant last year. I am overjoyed, and deeply grateful that I’ve been entrusted to bring this project to life. It’s called “After the spotlight: Sustainable urban development and geopolitical legacies in former mega-event cities.” The…
-
A year in the life of an academic: 2022 summary
It’s been a big year. Here’s a rundown of how it went for me. I started off 2022 with a nice interview on Deutsche Welle about the lack of sustainability at the Beijing Olympics. It was filmed from my living room office at home, still under lockdown from Covid-19. I remember being particularly grateful for…
-
Not really a timely project anymore: intimate urban geopolitics in eastern Ukraine
When I was finishing up my dissertation in early 2019, I wrote about laying the groundwork for the next phase of my academic career. I submitted two project ideas, one about mega-events in Paris and Los Angeles to be hosted at the University of Lausanne, and the other on urban geopolitics in eastern Ukraine at…
-
Play the Game – a new and refreshing kind of conference
I’ve heard of Play the Game, of course, because most of my critical sports friends and colleagues have participated at one time or another. I also contributed a commentary for a series on Protest and the Games organized by Dennis Pauschinger and John Lauermann, where I wrote about the challenges of protesting mega-events in Russia.…
-
Five days working for a better Olympics in Paris
With Covid seemingly diminished for the time being, I was finally able to get on the ground in Paris. Long overdue! I spoke at a days-long transnational anti-Olympics summit, at an academic event with more standard scholarly presentations, and at something like a philosophical salon devoted to exploring the nuances of Paris 2024. Vive la…
-
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…