Conferences

I like conferences.

They provide a very decent excuse to go some place interesting, talk to like-minded people about stuff that interests most attendees but no one else in the entire world, and just have fun.

I guess they're kind of like a group holiday for academics.

And today is the best day, for me, to book my attendance of the PALA conference in Heidelberg. I read the other two parts of the Campus Trilogy, Small World and Nice Work over the weekend, and this morning when I walked onto campus I saw a man who looked eerily like how I pictured the bearded Philip Swallow - tall, grey haired-and-bearded with a bald spot.

Today is also a good day for it because registration opened.

Of course I also signed up for Summer School, because how can I not when one of my former lecturers is teaching half of it and loads of fun people have said they'd join. Besides, I've managed to justify to myself most parts of the teaching programme as being useful in my Criminology studies (oh, the joys of an inherently interdisciplinary field!). I guess perceiving crime as the result of criminalisation, in turn a manner of maintaining and altering power-relations in society, allows for a great range of such justifications (and also explains why economics and political philosophy are still so interesting to me).

But, so, yes, I've booked my academic "summer camp" (it is kind of like that, too). If only it were summer yet.