Short Bio

Born, 1957, in Doorn, as one of a twin, and as son of Johanna Ernste-de Jong and Thomas Ernste. Because oft he job of my father with the Royal Dutch Marines, the family moved many times throughout the world, from Doorn (NL) to Manoquari (Dutch New Guinea), Holandia (now Jayapura) (Dutch New Guinea), back to Doorn (NL), then to the navy base Den Helder (NL), and to Rome (Italy), back to the Netherlands in Doetinchem. Probably this experience ignited my geographic interest in different places and cultures. After finishing high school in Doetinchem, without havíng Geography, in my graduation portfolio, I nevertheless chose to study Human Geography at the University of Groningen. During my studies, on a field work excursion, I met my later wife, Claudia Pfammatter, a nurse, in Switzerland. Immediately after graduation at University, we maried (1982) and left for Switzerland, since in the Netherlands, otherwise military service was waiting for me. In Switzerland I found my first job at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, where I also did my PhD in natural sciences. Without deliberately seeking a scientific career, doing science caught me and never let me loose again, and also kept bringing me at different places, partly also because my wife is a passionate traveller. Increasingly I also discovered that social relations and their spatiality was my core interest, irrespective if I studied the spatial division of labour, flexible specialisation in a regional context, social dilemma situations in relation to environmental problems, border issues, or the living together of different social groups in an urban environment. It was also my experience at the ETH, which coined my focus on theorising and research methodology. The focus on theorising, is of course not for the sake of theorising, but for the purpose of thoroughly reflected critical conceptual thinking about the topics we focus on in our research. The focus on research methodology is crucial because we cannot take our theoretical ideas and opinions to automatically be true. They need to be systematically empirically scrutinised. Methodology is key in doing that. Both, theory and methodology are sometimes seen by practically oriented geographers experienced as rather tedious and not necessary. But without it, our contribution would soon become rather trivial and not based on thorough empirical evidence. Intellectually I started from an action theoretic point of view and developed further via theories of communicative action, to more discursive (post-structuralist) frames of analysis to relational practice theoretical approaches, and who knows what is going to be next. Our daughter, was raised, bilingually, and continues our transnational life, by now studying archaeology (triggered by the Roman objects found when we constructed a basement under our house in Nijmegen) at the university in Basle, Switzerland. She shares with me our fascination for scientific inquiry and I dream of once writing a scientific publication together with my daughter…