I'm working my way through a busy three-week period in my PhD programme: a period of gathering data, attending meetings, writing papers, preparing speeches and testing ideas. Having successfully navigated a travel-heavy programme last week, this week is a little more orderly, with another round of interviews and meetings in (just!) two cities. However, the travel kicks in again on Saturday, with a flight to Klagenfurt Austria, via London and Vienna, to attend and speak at the 9th European Conference on Management, Leadership and Governance (13–15 Nov). The programme looks very interesting, with a wide variety of peer-reviewed papers to be presented by some very capable scholars. One of my papers will be presented on Thursday morning, and the other later the same day.

Despite the busy-ness of the period, the opportunity to meet some of the world's leading governance scholars, to further test the ideas that are starting to emerge from my research, is one I am very much looking forward to. For readers interested in the ECMLG conference, do pop back next week, because I intend to share my thoughts and insights here, as I did at the ICMLG conference in Bangkok earlier this year.