Browsed by
Category: Academic Life

L’esprit de l’escalier, or Meddling? What meddling?

L’esprit de l’escalier, or Meddling? What meddling?

In April this year I had the opportunity to give a talk at Smith College with Martin Müller and Chris Gaffney. The event was called Sport Mega Events and Urban Development: Cases of Brazil 2014, Rio 2016, Sochi 2014, Russia 2018, and it was hosted by Andrew Zimbalist. If you don’t know him, Andrew is a sports economist, hugely accomplished, a very friendly man and admirably prolific. After the talk, Andrew took us out for dinner. And over beers he started…

Read More Read More

My Current Conceptual Quandary

My Current Conceptual Quandary

Working on any large project – whether writing a dissertation, recording an album, or hosting a mega-event – means keeping track of a lot of moving parts. When I was working as a musician, I hung a large whiteboard on the studio wall where I’d draw a project management grid for each album. One axis listed every song and the other showed all the steps needed until completion, from recording individual instrument tracks to mixing and mastering. In my academic…

Read More Read More