“The Summer Institute for Economic Geography merged intense yet protracted discussion on pedagogy, theory, and method with social events and field trips that made friends and colleagues of senior and junior scholars. As a political economist, for me its significance extended beyond building connections with economic geographers and immersion in the discipline of Geography, it linked fellow travelers and academic debates from across the social sciences. Attending the Summer Institute in Frankfurt (2014) as a postdoc was a highly rare and fully rewarding experience!”

Heather Whiteside, PhD, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Waterloo

“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

“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 a fantastic venue to engage with emerging debates and practices in the discipline and to network with both early career and established scholars. As a participant at the Institute (2014) I gained practical knowledge about teaching and professionalization that has greatly aided my development as a new faculty member. I also made academic connections that have led to collaborative research projects with colleagues from around the world.”

Theresa Enright, PhD, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Toronto

“I already knew that economic geography is a heterodox and highly diverse field before attending the Summer Institute. But these six days of intense input and exchange helped me to make some sense of this diversity, to feel better equipped for navigating it, and to see my own position within it more clearly. For me, this was a unique opportunity for engaging with scholars and students from a variety of backgrounds beyond the often rather hectic conference gatherings, and to learn and benefit from their rich and diverse experiences.”

Alexander Vorbrugg, doctoral researcher, Department of Human Geography, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany