Dissertation (part 2)

After the first Seminar about our Research Proposals in November (see previous post), it was time for our second Seminar on 7 May. This was also our final one for this year, which means that our texts are analysed a bit more thoroughly and that the comments are a bit more spicy. If you want to read my text, just send me an e-mail or leave a comment on this blog and I will be happy to provide you with it. Thank you, all Swedish colleagues that read the text, and Dutch friends that also showed interest :)
It was a good day, this 7th of May. I first commented on Andreas' text, "The city in the city"; a text in the history discipline, outlining his plans for research in the place within society of the Philadelphia Church in Stockholm in the 20th Century. After that, it was Majas turn to provide my text with comments. Her general critique was that my Research Design is quite ambitious and that I need to think of the practical framework, mostly time and energy. I might have written a bit too enthusiastically about the different theories behind my research and the different methods that I want to use and the high number of interviews that I want to conduct. Other comments were that it might not be possible to measure the social and cultural impacts of 30 Dutch families in a municipality of 7,500 inhabitants over a period of just a few years.
However, I also received clear back-up for my ideas about writing a compilation thesis and the structure that I chose, basing the Thesis on a trilogy of articles comprising 1st the ideas behind attracting Dutch migrants from the side of the Bergslagen municipalities; 2nd the decision making process on the side of the Dutch households; and 3rd the impacts of the settling of the Dutch families in Bergslagen, both on the municipalities and on the households.

Overall, I received many good tips and some useless ones. In combination with the Network Day that we had a week later in Stockholm, it feels like a good end of the first year - Dissertation-wise. More about the Network Day soon!
/Meimer