The snowy Swiss countryside at dawn from the train to Neuchâtel.

I was fortunate this week to participate in an extremely interesting workshop,
Géographies en mouvements, organised under the auspices of the Programme Doctoral de Géographie of the Conférence Universitaire de Suisse Occidentale. The event brought together PhD students from a number of Swiss universities (namely Fribourg, Geneva, Lausanne, and Neuchâtel) to discuss, in broad terms, the mobility, circulation, and reception of ideas. Organised by Juliet Fall, the programme included, among other things, a contribution by Caterina Martinelli (a Royal Holloway alumna) on the linguistic and other barriers to the circulation of geographical ideas between Anglophone and non-Anglophone contexts.

It was particularly nice to be able to present my work on Macintosh to the (French-speaking) group, not least because I was able to discuss with them the translation of Travels into French and the linguistic and conceptual shifts that occurred in that process. There was also a specific local connection. Our venue, a wonderful eco hotel, farm, and organic restaurant in Montezillon, was situated in the hills above Neuchâtel, where copies of the French translation of Travels were sold and distributed by the Société typographique de Neuchâtel some 230 years ago.