I’m sick of looking at logarithmic scales and comparing infection rates among different nations. I can’t peel myself away from the data, though, looking at site after site after site. I text with friends and family around the world, comparing the news media to lived experience. I feel lucky. I feel guilty. I feel scared. I’m continuing my work as best I can. My university suspended activities. My kids are home from school too and everything would be fine except…
It’s out! Please download, read, and share! A pretty massive nationwide effort, all told, and yet we did it! I can’t quite express how grateful I am to all the contributors for getting this done so quickly and so well. It was practically an impossible project, deadline-wise, and yet we did it. So what is this? I contacted (almost) every university in Switzerland in order to solicit short articles, loosely referenced where appropriate, to explain what research on the urban…
I know there’s value in slowness, whether in thinking, eating, or spicy Czech-French novels. There’s more, of course, but I’m impatient. I know good work takes time, and I don’t want to rush it. And I love being part of this academic world and having the privilege and luxury of spending my days like this, refining ideas and aspiring in my way to improve conditions in the corner of the world I work with. But I do have some complaints…
We organized a series of sessions at the Congress on Youth and Winter Sports 2020 in Lausanne, tied to the Youth Olympic Games. Our sessions were entitled Events, Cities, and Urbanism and focused on the connections between mega-events and urban development from a variety of perspectives. The papers were great, I thought. We had wonderful contributors and I was happy to sit on the sidelines this time as an organizer instead of presenting or, more typically for me, doing both…
I’m not the kind of person who likes saying no, which I’ve heard is the “most important word in academia.” As I progress on this path, though, I’ve learned to be more judicious about the things I take on, because I don’t want to sacrifice quality in what I do. That’s a tough balance, though, especially at these early career stages where I’m feeling severe pressure to publish a) brilliant stuff, and b) a lot of it… or c) die…
I was in Fribourg for the 2019 Swiss Geoscience Meeting, and I was part of the newly expanded options for human geography. In 2018, there was only one series of sessions for human geographers, but this year our presence ballooned and we had three parallel streams. It was really well attended too, for the most part, and it’s nice to see that kind of growth year over year. I hosted a session this year and, as usual when I host,…
This conference hit close to home. It was a very personal affair, and not one that would be immediately obvious even to those who know me. I got to spend several days at University College London, which as it happens has played a large role in my family’s story. I’m not English, but I’ve been going to London regularly for much of my life. My sister moved there in the early 80s and she graduated from UCL. Her daughter, my…
So I went to Belgrade to my favorite conference, the CAT-ference. I consider this my home conference, if such a thing were possible – the place where I feel most comfortable. Honestly I love everything about it: the conference atmosphere is the best I’ve ever seen, and the themes are right up my alley. It’s always fresh, as it’s held in different sets of post-socialist cities each time, and composed of an interesting mix of influences as the local organizers…
Back in 2012, I lost my job in San Francisco. Our whole company did. One day I went into work and the atmosphere was horrible – people were scurrying around, carrying boxes, holding back tears. A bunch of suits had flown out from New York and laid everyone off. Some left that day, and some left a few months later. I didn’t know what to do. In 2013 Nastja and the kids and I left the US. We had five…
So this is the final installment of my probably unnecessarily detailed qualitative and quantitative dissertation analysis. Part 1 is here and you can read Part 2 here, if you want to get up to speed. In those previous installments, my work appeared sporadic and chaotic, with my mood all over the map. Lots of disappointments, self-doubt, and malaise. At the same time, we saw that continuing through low points – just putting in the time every day – led to…