This summer, Robert Dean Smith, PhD researcher in Anthropology and Sociology and affiliate at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy (AHCD), undertook a project to attend all of his academic commitments by bicycle. His goal was to replace conventional conference travel with cycling whenever possible.

The first part of the project took him to a doctoral course organised by the Conférence universitaire de Suisse occidentale (CUSO) near Montreux. To reach the venue, he cycled around Lake Geneva. Later in the summer he needed to reach a conference in Tilburg, in the Netherlands, and then continue on to London for a private commitment.

He began by cycling from Geneva to Solothurn, then from Solothurn to Strasbourg, and from Strasbourg to Mainz. 

An injury prevented him from completing the final 200–300 kilometres to Tilburg by bike, and he took a train for that section. After the conference, once the injury had improved, he resumed the project, cycling from Tilburg to Hoek van Holland, taking the ferry across the Channel to Harwich, and then riding the final stage to London.
 

On average, each day’s stage covered around 190 kilometres, with journeys lasting close to ten hours. The project combined long-distance cycling with academic travel, linking conference attendance with an alternative form of mobility across Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.