Final summer of the project

Now that the Midsummer festivities have taken place a week ago, most colleagues are on holidays or working home. It's quiet here at Örebro University Campus, with a few youngsters left, working on their PhD dissertations. As you have guessed, I am one of them, working towards a deadline on 17 September 2013. This is the date that was set, after the final seminar in May. If everything goes according to plan, the manuscipt will be revised by then, which means it can be printed for posting on 15 October. Public defence of the dissertation is currently scheduled at 8 November 2013.

But in the mean time, I am reading and writing, reflecting and revising. Most attention goes to the theoretical frame, which will consist of a critical review of the fields of creative class (Florida, 2002, 2007), counterurbanisation and lifestyle migration. Other revision considers the research design. Based on this, a conclusion and an epilogue with recommendations for further studies will be written.

Recently, Population, Space and Place notified me that an article of mine ("Lifestyle migration to the North") is accepted for publication. So, before the end of the year, this will probably be posted on their website. Also, another article was published at the site of European Urban and Regional Studies, some weeks ago. This article examines rural place promotion to attract new residents to the Swedish countryside. A summary can be found on the blog of the lifestyle migration hub.

Through this hub, my attention was alos drawn to a conference on practices of the good life, to be held in Lissabon later this year. I am happy to participate there! More information can be found here.

For now, revising the Kappa, I hope to enjoy this final summer of the PhD project.

Final Seminar

In about a week's time, the final seminar will take place.
This means that all manuscripts will be commented upon by an external opponent.
These manuscripts are the four papers:
I: the article published in Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie.
II: an article accepted for European Urban and Regional Studies.
III: a manuscript submitted to Population, Space and Place, after a second revision.
IV: a chapter in a book about Place and Identity.

As a synthesis of these four papers, I spent the first months of 2013 writing a Kappa, in which research design, theory and results are specified.

As usual, it was hard to find a longer period of time in which to write non-stop, since other projects evolved simultaneously:
- a course on Social Theory and Geography, with meetings in Uppsala (January), Lund (March) and Gotland (April). A paper for this course is due in June.
- a course on Quantitative Methods, with lectures or laboraties almost every Thursday in Örebro.
- an internet-course on information seeking, through Blackboard and at the University library in Örebro.

Last but not least, I was lucky enough to be accepted to present a paper (in the Bonaventure Hotel) at the annual conference of the Association of American Geographers, this year held in Los Angeles, in April.