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Category: Academic Life

The end of the blog: so long and thanks

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 before I finished my PhD all the way to where I am now. It’s been fun to document the journey. But it’s time draw the…

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Conference organizing lessons from the Human Geography subculture at the 2023 Swiss Geosciences Meeting

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 Meeting. I’ve organized my share of things before but this was a new experience, both in terms of scope and also because our contributions are…

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A quick summary of my keynote in Riga: Ethics and the everyday in times of global crisis

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 fitting venue. This was the 10th edition of the “Cities After Transition” conference – our beloved CATference. In my keynote, I took stock of the…

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Investigating mega-event host cities after the spotlight

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 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…

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Ambizione project: After the spotlight of hosting mega-events

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 problem is that mega-events like the Olympics and the Football World Cup have dramatic impacts on cities and societies. Typically, organizing authorities promise infrastructural, political,…

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A year in the life of an academic: 2022 summary

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 them giving me a decent amount of space for nuanced discussion. This is not always the case with media interviews, unfortunately. DW one stood out…

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Not really a timely project anymore: intimate urban geopolitics in eastern Ukraine

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 the University of St. Gallen. At the time, I wrote: There’s actually something interesting going on here and I think it’s worth unpacking for a…

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Play the Game – a new and refreshing kind of conference

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. But until now, I’d never attended the actual conference. This time, I spoke about the uncomfortable intersections between sport and war, in a talk called…

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Five days working for a better Olympics in Paris

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 France! It was a very busy week. With the anti-Olympics crowd, I spoke three times: about the declining sustainability of the Olympics over time, about…

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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,…

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