“I had the opportunity to attend the Economic Geography Summer Institute in Zurich in 2012. The opportunity was perfectly timed for me as I was about to embark on my dissertation fieldwork in the Fall of that year. First of all, without the financial aid the Institute provided, it would not have been possible for me to attend and I am grateful to the organisers for making that happen for me. The Institute was very well organised and reflected the hard work that went into it by the organisers as well as the hosts. The faculty represented a whole range of perspectives within the field of economic geography. Their talks at the Institute not only provided a great history of the diverse set of past and ongoing research in the field but also provided an insight into the new and cutting edge theoretical explorations being engaged in. Personal one-on-one discussions with the faculty also allowed me to better focus and contextualize the research questions I was about to examine in my own work. Aside from theoretical engagements in economic geography, the discussions also focused on other interesting issues such as practical applications in policy, negotiating the precarious job market, and academic writing and publishing.”

Aman Luthra, doctoral researcher, Department of Geography & Environmental Engineering, Johns Hopkins University

“SEIG spurs new conversations and collaborations between scholars working across a wide range of topics in economic geography. As an early-career faculty it allowed me to better situate my work in the field and inspired future research directions.”

Stephen Young, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison 

"The SIEG 2016 was a wonderful and unique opportunity. It was a rich week of inspiration." Erika Machacek, PhD, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland “The Summer Institute in Economic Geography is the ultimate alt-conference: it brings together a small, dynamic mix of early career scholars with geography’s leading voices in a way that allows for deep theoretical dives, methodological debates, topical discussions, and informal socializing. It was an experience like none other I've had in higher education, encouraging participants to feel at home amongst our peers and build relationships that will persist throughout our careers.”

Beth Gutelius, doctoral researcher, University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Urban Planning & Policy

“The Summer Institute in Economic Geography has been a very rich experience for me. Its mixture of different perspectives on the field, involving productive debate and engagement between them, creates new and exciting inputs for theory, methods and practice which are especially important for those of us in the beginning of our academic trajectories. The spaces for informal interactions during the event also open up productive dialogues and help strengthen contacts between participants. In my specific case, working outside the Anglophone and northern academic circuits, it has been not only an opportunity to interact directly with researchers inserted in those contexts, but also with other global south academics, with whom we tend to have difficulties in engaging directly (due to still weak south to south connections).”

Felipe Magalhães, doctoral researcher, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil

“The Summer Institute in Economic Geography is an extraordinary event. It is somewhere in-between a state-of-the-art convention for economic geography (where it stands today and where it needs to evolve) and a rite of passage for early career scholars (once one gains a sense of “location” in something as fluid and difficult to grasp as an epistemic community). Valuable, indispensable, and highly recommended.”

Michiel van Meeteren, doctoral student, Department of Social and Economic Geography, Ghent University, Belgium