Lifestyle Migration Hub

Today, a blog post about my research has been published on a newly established Blog on Lifestyle Migration. Go on and have look!

Almost a year...

Almost a year has passed since the latest item was published on this blog. I have been meaning to write, but "time flies", as the spatio-temporal saying goes...

Those 12 months in retrospect:

In November 2011, a manuscript on international rural placemarketing was finalised and submitted. In that month and the next, I was teaching on a course on population, mobility and urbanisation. In January, a conference on Place Branding was organised, in Utrecht, on which I gained many interesting insights in (mainly) city branding, and how it may or may not be translated into rural areas. I also presented a paper on rural place branding, which may be published in an e-book on the organisors website.

Since 1 August 2012, I am back at work after 8 months of paternity leave. Besides much administrative efforts, some reading and writing has been done during the past weeks.

• For a course on Classical Geographical Texts, in which I have been enrolled since 2008, I finally found time and inspiration to write the final paper. I decided to focus on senses of place (Tuan) and affect (Thrift).
• Simultaneously, I have been working on an article about Lifestyle migration to the North, for which I received comments in July. This article was the subject of a short seminar at Aspa Mansion south of Örebro, as part of the annual internal meeting with CUReS in August.
• At that meeting, plans were discussed for the publication of a reader on place and identity, which may be on it's way before the end of the year. Ten texts/chapters are written. Contacts with the publisher will hopefully result in more information and perhaps more concrete planning.
• A schedule is planned for a course on population, mobility and urbanisation, to be taught in November and December 2012.
• Preparations are made for a final Seminar (Slutseminarium) for one of my colleague PhD Candidates, on Thursday 12 September.
• A lot of reading rather theoretical texts needs to be done, in order to prepare for writing a synthesis (Kappa) for my upcoming dissertation.

This gives rise to looking forward. Also in this case, one can speak of almost a year. Either in June, September or October 2013, I will probably defend my dissertation. But first, around March next year, my final Seminar is due. Untill that time, so much work is to be done; finalising two articles and a chapter, writing a Kappa, finding an opponent for the final Seminar, etc.

Also next year, two interesting events are organised, in which some of our Human Geography department may participate; the biannual Nordic Geographer's Meeting (NGM), in June 2013 in Reykjavík (IS) and a conference on Emotional Geographies in Groningen (NL) a month later.

Hopefully, the next item on this blog will not take another year to be published!