Saturday 23 July 2011

Spring & Summer 2011

In the midst of Summer 2011, it's finally time for only the second item of the year. Now that I've been on paternity leave and waiting for the second little one to come since the 4th of July, I've some spare time for an attempt to summarise the past months of 2011:

- lecturing; the course on Population, Urbanisation and Mobility in a slightly altered format, as well as a complete new format for the course on writing a minor academic thesis (B-uppsats). This second course was joined with the former course on Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to result in an integrated map-and-report assignment.

- conferences; the final week of the GIS-report course coincided with the 4th biannual Nordic Geographers Meeting (NGM) in Roskilde, Denmark. Thus, this week at the end of May was quite a challenge, where Anders and me found ourselves replying to students' e-mails before breakfast at 7 am in our B&B at the Danish countryside. The other conference was the 6th International Conference on Population Geographies (ICPG) in Umeå with many interesting contributions and a conference diner at the archipelago of Norrbyskär. Next ICPG will be held in Groningen in 2013!

- manuscripts; Mostly during June, I've been writing and editing a number of manuscripts for my Dissertation. The first article, on international counterurbanisation, was in need of minor revisions which were to be done in due time. The second and third articles, on rural place marketing and the decision to migrate from the Netherlands to rural Sweden respectively, are in the course of creation. Last but not least, a chapter on mobility, place and ambivalence is in the making. This manuscript is supposed to be a contribution to an anthology on place and identity, to be published by CUReS. We will have a meeting in Bredsjö in August in order to discuss progression considering the Anthology.

- fieldwork; at the basis for the manuscripts lies fieldwork covering some months and a number of observations and interviews at emigration fairs and with Dutch households in Bergslagen. This fieldwork will be continued after my paternity leave ends in September.

By the way, needless to say that this blog is simply an online diary of a PhD Student in Sweden. For more contents and debates, one may take a look at Bo Malmberg's or Lena Sommestad's weblogs.

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