Some Notes on Being Retired

Brief Biography

I was born and raised in Amsterdam, and lived for a while in two other Dutch cities (in Maastricht, long before the treaty; and in The Hague, when the Dutch government had already been there for some centuries). I studied at the University of Amsterdam, wrote my PhD and worked there from beginning to end, finally as Professor of Political Geography and then as Dean of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. In between I studied in the archives in London and Dublin on Irish resistance movements in the 19th century, did field work in the West of Ireland as European Agricultural Policy was introduced there and in the Rif and Anti Atlas in Morocco in the places of origin of what at the time were called ‘guest workers’ in the Netherlands. I also spent some periods at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. I have been journal editor (GeoJournal, TESG) and chair of the IGU Commission of Political Geography, I have got the Plancius Medal of the Royal Dutch Geographical Society, the Matteï Dogan Prize of the IGU and I am a Member of the Academia Europaea.