2024 Summer Institute of Economic Geography. Singapore. 21/07/2024-26/07/2024.

Summer Institute of Economic Geography (SIEG) represents a unique approach to advanced training, mentoring, and professional development for early-career researchers entering the field of economic geography, broadly defined, oriented to the highest standards of international practice. By bringing together a group of active young researchers from around the world and a small group of internationally renowned faculty, the Summer Institute seeks to make a distinctive contribution to the ongoing development and social and intellectual ‘reproduction’ of economic geography as a diverse research community, complementing existing graduate training and faculty mentoring programs. More details for SIEG could be accessed via the official website here.

Starting in 2003, SIEG has been organised by leading economic geographers represented by Jamie Peck (one of the founding members and the organisers for each event), Kris Olds, Adam Tickell, Kevin Ward, Trevor Barnes, Christian Berndt, Henry Yeung, Dariusz Wojcik, etc. Featured speakers included Eric Sheppard, Andrew Leyshon, Jessie Poon, Ash Amin, Harald Barthelt, David Rigby, Brett Christophers, James Murphy, Gavin Bridge, Jane Pollard, Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, Erik Swyngedouw, Sarah Hall, Dieter Kogler, Chun (Charlotte) Yang, etc. Each event would have 30-40 early-career participants.

This time in Singapore was the 11^th event and selected 35 participants out of over 300 applicants across the world. The organising committee consisted of Jamie Peck, Henry Yeung, and Dariusz Wojcik. It was the first time that SIEG was held outside North America and Europe. The event lasted for a week from 21 to 26 July 2024. There were four featured speakers delivering plenary talks and multiple panels discussing the cutting-edge research topics in economic geography.

Zhenfa Li participated in this 2024 SIEG as a doctoral researcher. He participated in two panels. In the first panel, he was a discussant of the plenary talk delivered by the featured speaker Prof. Mia Grey from the University of Cambridge. Prof. Grey examined the cost of living crisis in the UK using the prepayment meter for energy use as the empirical focus. She tried to conceptualise ‘everyday’ versus ‘extraordinary’ based on the empirical case. Zhenfa commented on the talk using his own living experiences and in terms of the way of conceptualisation.

In the second panel, Zhenfa and other panellists discussed what opportunities are brought by the increasing importance of Asian countries in the research on economic geography. Zhenfa shared his insights based on his PhD thesis in terms of theorising back using a Chinese story to the existing debates.

Photos by participants and organisers of 2024 SIEG