It has been pleasant to revisit the Continent and once again be reminded about the vast differences that exist between the UK and the civilised world across the Channel. Nonetheless, I am looking forward, somewhat desperately, to return to Oxford and start writing up my thesis chapters.

Having done empirical studies with and in companies for the past one and a half years, I cannot wait to fall back into the usual accountability framework, where I work first and foremost for the benefit of my own research, i.e. focusing purely on the requirements laid out by my supervisor and myself. I am not going going to run out of data and ideas for the next 50 years or so, I reckon.

If things go to plan I will have my Confirmation of Status (submission of two chapters and a severe beating discussion) in late November, which is the second major ‘checkpoint’ in the course of a DPhil – this puts me on track to the third and final viva voce examination, the thesis defense. My examiners, who are both stellar people, will be Sue Dopson and Marc Ventresca.

Before getting thus far, though, I have a two-week field course in the Kola Peninsula starting July 31. This deserves a separate blog post, suffice to say for now that the draft programme contains some really interesting entries: a meeting with representatives of Saami and Komi cultures, as well as excursions to Solovki Monastery, a mine (Kirovsk), a copper-nickel smelter (Monchegorsk), a nuclear power plant (Polyarnye Zori) and the site of some of the worst atrocities in modern history, Sandormokh.

A bit like the “quantum computing”, “knowledge management”, “branding” or “tacit knowledge” of the late ’90s/early ’00s.

This is not least because of the large population of parrots (Ring-necked Parakeets): you see them and hear their squawking calls everywhere, particularly in Rotterdam, Amsterdam and The Hague.

(Un)Naturally, this is an invasive species, just like the parrots of suburban London. They are beautiful creatures, nevertheless, and with a dash of lime and garlic they make an excellent starter…

The slight interruption has been caused by a group of vicious spammers who managed to generate a backlog of 700,000 comments. Eventually my host decided to pull the plug since it was causing too much load on the server.

Upon returning from Roskilde, Bering has been forced to volunteer to get everything up and running again.