Berlin Conference
On my way back from Spain I went to a conference on the second generation of immigrants in the United States and Europe. It was excellent! I presented the dissertation proposal idea I’ve been working on, and we had a discussion about it. We all read each others’ papers ahead of time and I got a great sense of the European literature in my areas of interest. It was very small so there were a lot of opportunities for interaction and getting to know each other. Everyone was either a student, or recent graduate, or young professor. I had a strong feeling of meeting and getting to know future colleagues, from the U.S. and Spain, as well as France, Belgium, Germany, England, Austria, Turkey, and Switzerland.
There were two themes of the conference: education and the city. As I read peoples’ work and listened to the keynote talks, I got excited about perhaps doing my dissertation as a comparative study between two cities, maybe even San Francisco-Barcelona. Need to talk with professors and other colleagues and get feedback on the idea, as well as other things I’m considering for my study design.