Review and preview of 2006

What better way to start of the New Year than by looking back on that same year. The International Herald Tribune publishes a column by  H.D.S. Greenway of the Boston Globe in which he looks back on 2006. Looks like it’s going to be an interesting year.

Chalabi will run for president in Iran. Rumsfeld will resign because of alleged relations with Saddam Hussein. The term ‘torture’ will be redefined by Cheney. The US will create its own Foreign Legion. And Blair will start working part-time as the new US Secretary of Defense. Let’s review these predictions later this year

My plans will be more down to earth. Number one priority will be gathering the empirical data for my post-doc research project. First I will need to revise the planning slightly because of some practical problems I encountered at the end of 2005 regarding my projected case studies. Probably the case of Singapore will be excluded from my research. Instead I will try to compare Southeast Asian developments (related to higher education policies and the idea of the knowledge society) to developments in OECD countries by including Australia and the Netherlands in my project. Hence some trips need to be planned to go to Malaysia, Indonesia and the Netherlands this year.

Other plans include participation in workshop 27 of the Joint Sessions of the European Consortium for Political Research in Nicosia (Cyprus) and in session 2 of the Research Committee on Sociology of Science and Technology at the annual International Sociological Association conference in Durban (South Africa).

And of course I will try to be more frequent in my postings while I am abroad. Due to my stay in the Netherlands in October, in Portugal in November last year and my current stay in the US, I have not been posting as regularly as I wanted. When I am back in Australia next week, I’ll try to get back to a ‘normal’ schedule.

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