Back from King’s

What a ride, after one week in sunny (yes, no jokes) London I am just back to good old rainy and SNOWY Bergen (yes, it snowed today, 3^rd of May!!!). The London trip was a success in both professional and personal levels (tip to all out there: do not mix travelling with family and work unless there is no other way because you cannot do any of them properly!).

The purpose of the trip was to visit King’s College of London http://www.kcl.ac.uk/index.aspx and meet the group of scholars and students working on Competition Law (some very big names there, eh?) http://www.kcl.ac.uk/law/research/centres/european/programmes/eucompetition.aspx. We had the chance to meet Richard Whish, Christopher Townley, David Bailey, among others.

At King’s we visited the research facilities, the Maughan Library (a very impressive building with beautiful architecture), and had the chance to present for about 20 mins our projects at the University of Bergen and receive some feedback and suggestions.

The Maughan Library

I did a short presentation on my PhD research project entitled: “Buyer power, public procurement and public undertakings”. The presentation allowed me to introduce my research interests for the first time to an external group of specialists and to get some interesting comments from them. I have taken duly notice of their remarks and plan to use the suggestions well. As a side note, I am very happy that the remarks were all positive and not the sort of: “this PhD research project has no future or it is too ambitious or not novel”.

But I also went to London for personal reasons and it was a lot of fun. The food was amazing (we ate everyday a different kind of food) and the beer was plenty, cheap and great. Intensive sightseeing (Tower of London, outrageously expensive Westminster Abbey, Strand, Picadilly Circus, you name it....) Also, it was my first time in London as an adult and I enjoyed the vibrant city a lot, although it is not my favorite city in Europe. I’d rather visit Paris or Rome before a trip to London, but that is just a matter of personal taste.

Now I am back in Bergen, with not so great weather but plenty of things to do!