I used to try to avoid giving the ‘same’ talk more than once, but sometimes it was inevitable. It’s looking like I will be giving something in the region of 25 talks this year (invited lectures or at conferences), and so some repetition, even quite a lot, is difficult to avoid.

The most recent talk was today at the Open University, and it was a version of a talk that first had an outing in Toronto, and then at Copenhagen, Durham, and UCL. The title is ‘From Territorium to Territory’ and it’s basically a history of the word territorium. Today is, I think, the last time I’ll give a version of this talk. There have been small variants in the content, and when I first gave it I had a much fuller script, whereas the subsequent versions worked much more loosely with the material and used a prezi for the quotes and some images. Sometimes there has been an extended coda on Foucault and sometimes not. But it’s basically been the same talk.

There’s another main talk I’ve been giving over the past while, even though I keep thinking I’ve finished giving it, which is ‘Land, Terrain, Territory’. Because it’s now available online it’s become the talk I give as a supplementary seminar, since the text can be read in advance and the discussion can be somewhat looser. It can also work well as the basis for a more student based talk, such as the one I gave last week in Pisa.

What makes gives talks worthwhile is, of course, the questions and discussion. Today at the OU was particularly good and it was a shame that discussion had to be cut short. Last week at UCL was a longer discussion and lots of good issues raised. Lots to think about for the book certainly.

But aside from an ‘intervention’ at this event at the University of Westminster later this week, which is more of me commenting on other people’s work rather than my own, that’s it until late July, when a new paper will have its first (only?) outing in Erlangen.

Again it’s part of the large book on territory I’m working on, but that book is so large there are still parts I’ve yet to present. And there are some parts yet to write…