So, I’m back from another trip up north and have settled back in the familiar work rhythm. This post will be another progress report where I quickishly discuss the recent goings-on.
I once again attended the Abisko Ice Climbing Festival in Arctic Sweden. I’ve already collected most of the ethnographic data that I’ll need for the eventual article that I hope to write but of course when I’m in an event such as this and surrounded by interesting people, I can’t help but have my antenna up so to speak, and so I did write ethnographic notes in the evenings and will use them later on in my research. So all in all, it was a nice combination of business and pleasure.
I took a picture of my partners approaching a local classic ice climb called Det stora blå (The Big Blue), the visible steep and narrow icefall near the upper left. A really nice two-pitch climb.
After the Sweden trip I picked up my family from a train station in Finland and we continued to Arctic Norway. During this part of the trip I didn’t conduct any research but just did nice stuff with my family.
I did also sneak away to do a quick SkiMo (ski mountaineering) race near Tromso. Here’s a pic of the eventual second-place finisher arriving on the summit of the mountain. I “competed” in a different class than him, so had the time to actually take a couple of pics during the race. Good times.
Then, some pertinent actual academic news: it was confirmed this past weekend that I will transfer to the University of Jyväskylä next semester. This is because the University of Vaasa decided in the summer to kick most of its humanities students and staff out and transfer them to Jyväskylä. I’ll write more on how this thing develops in the future when I actually know more.
This whole situation with the transfer to Jyväskylä also meant that my grant applications were a whole lot more complicated than they should have been under normal circumstances. It was quite difficult to write the applications like nothing had happened, and not mention the possibility of the transfer, which I was still pondering when I submitted my applications. However, I was advised to do it like this, and was told that since these are special circumstances that everyone in the academic community in Finland is aware of, all this confusion should not make a difference in the likelihood of getting a continuation to my grant. That remains to be seen but I surely hope so.
And finally, I also finished one short course that I was teaching. This was a small course that was arranged during a couple of Friday evenings and Saturday mornings. It was a fun course to teach and the students were very nice. Always good to get some padding in the teaching resume, especially since the schedule of this course was such that it didn’t really interfere with my research which is, after all, my main task.
A boring but vaguely academic pic taken during the course to offset the not-so-academic pics above.
So that’s all for now, I’ll now continue trying to write something more “serious”, etc. And, I should actually still try to find funding for the upcoming ecocriticism conference trip in Sweden in May. Haven’t found anything yet but if anyone’s got any good tips on where to apply for travel grants, I’m all ears.
Featured image (not visible in mobile theme) has nothing to do with anything but is merely a throwback pic to the last day at Hacettepe Uni back in December.
extreme researcher 