Congo, WGAPE, the Netherlands.

Finally a post. The last three weeks were quite the rollercoaster. Shortly after sending out a grant application with Raul, Massimo and Suresh (fingers crossed!), I was in Congo for a week (May 13-21). We - Macartan, Raul and I - presented the results of our evaluation in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi (report will come out publicly soon!). The 22nd I was back in New York, but left the next day again for California. WGAPE - a bi-annual get-together of researchers working on the political economy of Africa - took place at UC Berkeley on the 24th and 25th. In brief: fantastic! In less brief: WGAPE is a small, select group of economists, anthropologists and political scientists from West-coast universities (Stanford, UCLA, UC Berkeley, etc.). This was the first time WGAPE also invited researchers from East-coast universities and I was one of the lucky ones. For two days very high quality research was presented. It's also a great place to get to know the big people in the field (Dan Posner, Ted Miguel, Jeremy Weinstein, etc.) but also fellow Ph.D. candidates -- also in more social contexts. After WGAPE I stayed an extra day in San Fransisco (Jenn: thanks for the couch!), did some sightseeing, and was back in NYC the 26th. The 27th and 28th, together with Pierce, we packed our apartment into boxes (why so many books?!) and the 30th we rented a truck and moved all of it into storage in Brooklyn. We're both gone for 3 months and want something different when back. The 31st I was in a plane again to Amsterdam via Berlin. Upon arrival in the Netherlands we left the next day again: both my little brothers ran a half-marathon and with the family we made it a weekend-away. I'm now back in Oudewater (the Netherlands) and, finally, things start to slow down.

Fig1. Dear UC Berkeley. I like you.
Please offer me a job end-2013.

Fig 2. Unloading the truck (Pierce and
truck under the left "LOADING")

June, July, August 2012
So, I'm in the Netherlands and will be here until end-August! What am I up to? One of the first things is to make the results of the Congo evaluation public. Yesterday evening I worked until 3am with Macartan and we're close to finishing the polishing of the report; so soon more! Then related to this evaluation a big thing for the summer will be: First, to do secondary analysis. The results that we find in the Congo, do they hold for certain sub-populations only? Does the development project work better in some (type of) regions than in others? Et cetera. Second, in addition to writing the academic version of the evaluation report, we have collected a lot of data during this evaluation and also a large number of ideas. So the plan is to write a set of academic papers - the first steps to be taken this summer. But first, upcoming week, I want to finish an academic paper about Voix des Kivus. The project finished more than a year ago, it has been presented at several occasions and thus it is now time to polish the paper and maybe send to a journal. Also related to VdK is a meeting in Berlin early July. Together with Macartan we're contributing a chapter to a book related to the rise and use of new technology. Very interesting (also more on this later).


Most important for this summer though is my disseration. My fifth year at Columbia University just finished and it is really time to write up some chapters. The (too many) ideas are there. The (too much) data is there. Now I have to write it. Some work for my dissertation that I am particularly excited about is based on data that is being collected since my last trip to Eastern Congo (Dec-Feb 2012). We started a set of field-experiments and village mapping earlier this year and my team in the field (South Kivu, Congo) has continued the work since. Upon my departure in February I had a first pile of hardcopies with me: data from 6 villages, around 1,200 surveys. Last trip (May 2012) I took another pile with me from Congo to New York - another 2,000 surveys). Because I will spend my time in the Netherlands this summer, I sent this data from New York to my parents place - the box arrived this morning. Thanks USPS. I'm very excited!

Fig3. What will this data tell me about migration and
cooperation in Congo? Can't wait to process and analyze it!