A research visit to CEU Vienna - and a detour through Prague and Bratislava

This spring I spent a few weeks as a visiting PhD researcher at the Department of Public Policy and the Doctoral School of Political Science, Public Policy and International Relations at Central European University, on the Vienna campus.

The research stay

I was hosted by Florian Weiler, whose work on the allocation of adaptation aid sits right at the border between economics and political science. That is also where much of my own PhD lives !

During the visit I presented my work on climate aid, local economic activity and greenhouse-gas emissions in the DPP seminar, and started developing a new collaboration with Florian on adaptation aid in Africa.

Beyond the seminar room, what stayed with me was how warmly the DPP and the doctoral school welcomed me into their community from day one. My sincere thanks to everyone there, and to the coordinators of the doctoral school for making the stay so easy and so productive.

A deeper look on Central Europe…

A research stay in Central Europe is also an invitation to explore it. On my days off I took the train out to Prague and Bratislava: two cities a stone’s throw from Vienna and impossible to resist.

Prague gave me its castle and the spires of St. Vitus, the basilica at Vyšehrad, a grey-and-silver Vltava, and a sobering afternoon in the Museum of Communism (“dream, reality, nightmare”) which, for a development economist, is a useful reminder of what is at stake when institutions fail. Bratislava, smaller and quieter, offered pastel courtyards, a hilltop castle, and that particular pleasure of standing on a brass compass set into the pavement and reading off the distance to everywhere.

Hope to get back there some times !