…by preparing my move to Utrecht where I will be working as a lecturer from this month on. As soon as I have finalised the transition to my first work placement after completing my PhD I will post a brief summary of my “post-doc job-hunt” (i.e. an overview of my experiences and advice for all of you who are close to finishing or already have passed their viva).
I was also busy with some other projects, such as writing for a new online magazine with a focus on international and European politics: Vocal Europe. You can read two of my analytical pieces on the Eurozone crisis as well as migration crisis there; both topics continue to dominate most discussions in the transnational public sphere on the continent.
The past few weeks saw heightened activity in the Eurozone crisis discourse, catalysed by the European lenders’ tough stance towards Athens and Alexis Tsipras’ subsequent call for a referendum on the last bailout. Once more, the extremely volatile relation between national sovereignty and transnational “solidarity” almost led to the infamous “Grexit” and a breakdown of European cooperation. Interestingly, the quite hostile dispute between the Greek government and their European counterparts also reinvigorated the left’s case for Euroscepticism – a political domain that was long a stronghold of the (extreme) right. And of course, there is the very peculiar case of Yannis Varoufakis – former Greek finance minister who held his post only shortly (there must be a reason why academics often fail in politics) – who seems to be an iridescent example for increasing personalisation in the otherwise extremely complex and confusing crisis discourse. I will soon post a brief article on the latter phenomenon by comparing him and Tsipras with their German counterparts, their predecessors, and other European politicians.
The cover image shows Hong Kong seen from Victoria’s Peek, which I visited for personal and professional reasons in June.
Dennis Nguyen 