I am visiting St. John's (Newfoundland, Canada) this week as the George M. Story Distinguished Lecturer at @MemorialU (Memorial University of Newfoundland). I am beyond honoured for the invitation and the opportunity to meet @MemorialU students and faculty
Tomorrow, Tuesday, I'll be giving a public lecture on the global politics of bottled water. This piece of mine offers some background - (Re)theorizing the Politics of Bottled Water: Water Insecurity in the Context of Weak Regulatory Regimes buff.ly/2THEfop 
On Friday I'll be channeling my inner @eatingpolitics and @maliniranga and sharing my research on the comparative politics and geographies of informal waste picking. Speaking political science to geographers and geography to political scientistss. Oh. My. A nice challenge.
Those of you familiar with my work on discard studies will know that this particular project originated in 2012, but I had done work on waste governance before raulpacheco.org/2014/04/unders… this project led me to collaborate with @kmoneill2530 and @KateParizeau
In fact, this project led me to work on my first (of several!) methods piece with @KateParizeau - Doubly Engaged Ethnography: Opportunities and Challenges When Working With Vulnerable Communities buff.ly/2TmHNgS where we compared our experiences studying waste picking.
This particular research visit is not only an honor, but also a rare opportunity to engage with spectacularly good faculty and students. Memorial University of Newfoundland is a peculiarity because they've hired some amazing faculty in the past few years and their strength shows.
It's also a special occasion because I will be giving two workshops for graduate students, on research strategies and on self-care and life in academia. This invitation enables me to showcase not only my research (which is important) but also my mentorship side (also very key).
Every time I am invited to do something, I challenge myself to do something new or innovative. This time, I am adapting my usual "here's how I do research" spiel to focus specifically on strategies for PhD & Masters students, and using my site's Resources raulpacheco.org/resources/
So while, yes, I was invited because of my research output and the work I do as a scholar, I am glad to have an opportunity to engage with faculty and students in various other ways. Thanks, as always, to @amandabittner @toxiclegacies and the Departments of Geography and PoliSci.
