What does your ideal morning look like?
I like waking up to daylight while still feeling that the morning rush around me hasn’t quite begun. An ideal morning also includes peace and quiet, an inbox that isn’t overflowing, low sunlight, and plenty of strong coffee within reach. Sometimes the ideal mornings happen when I’m working from home or on weekends; other times they’re mornings towards the end of the week at the faculty.
What book or books have you read recently, and would you recommend them?
I’ll stick to fiction, so I don’t bore anyone. After more than a decade, I’ve happily returned to Houellebecq, whose books I used to devour as soon as they came out. Among other things, I appreciate how specifically sociological his writing is - deep, unpretentious, and otherwise different. This time, I revisited The Elementary Particles and Platform, and the feelings they evoked were just the same as back then. I was also very taken with Someone to Talk to by Liu Zhenyun, which I read alongside Branko Milanović’s Capitalism, Alone. I enjoyed how a fictional analysis of Chinese society can so effectively complement—and illustrate through its micro-stories—the arguments of an academic political economist. At the moment, I’m slowly making my way through Pasolini’s The Ashes of Gramsci.
What do you look forward to most in your workday?
I look forward to my morning coffee while clearing out my inbox, to saying the classic line “So, any questions or comments?” at the end of class — followed by no questions or comments at all (which clearly means the students understand everything perfectly) — and to working lunches where no actual work gets done. Rare and precious are the moments when I upload a finished article to the journal’s submission system, though this usually happens outside typical working hours — at night, on weekends, or on public holidays.
