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…
I spent the afternoon at the University of Basel at an informal workshop on urban studies pedagogy. The idea of this workshop was to bring together a range of scholars working on the urban in order to exchange ideas about pedagogy. It was a lovely opportunity to meet interesting people and discuss approaches to teaching, which is something that I’d like to concentrate on now that I’ve actually submitted my dissertation. It was organized by the Critical Urbanisms group at…
I went to Minsk. I never thought I’d get to see it, especially after my unfortunate encounters with the Russian security and migration authorities. But I was invited by a good friend at the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and so, I thought, why not try? Aside from the desire to see Belarus, this would be a good opportunity to check my status with Russia. Russia and Belarus share security architecture, among much else, so if I’m on a list in one…
“At some point you have to take a moral stance and say that undermining authoritarian governments is better than undermining democratic ones.” This is how Robert Orttung, from the Elliot School of International Affairs at George Washington, answered my question today. Robert, together with Sufian Zhemukhov, have written enough about the Sochi Olympics that you pretty much have to cite them if you do any work at all in this area (see, for example, this article in East European Politics,…