Actually Katharine’s only originally from Bristol, but is now at Lancaster in the religious studies department. She’s researching conceptions of truth in postmodern religious networks, including emerging church bloggers. So we had heaps to talk about, including where we may fit after our PhDs are done and there’s nobody to look after us. It’s interestingly difficult being in some interdisciplinary field involving or including religion, especially in lands where religion should be taught and researched among, and only among, religious people. Communications specialists and sociologists and whatnot are not interested in conceptions of theology, and theologians don’t want to know you when you study what’s on the ground rather than what’s in the cloister.

But we got lost together in London, found ourselves at the Palace and then the Abbey, so we enjoyed our time together. I really appreciate that she came all the way down just to hang out with me. It was fantastic.

I’m now in a cafe on Piccadilly Circus; it has free Wi-Fi and power points near the tables, so I’m a very happy man. Have been in the UK since Saturday night. I’m staying with Cam, who’s has a really lovely bunch of housemates (all Aussies, in fact I think the entire suburb is Australian), and an even lovelier new girlfriend named Emma.

On Monday I flew to Edinburgh, and bugger me that is a breathtakingly beautiful city. I stayed with my old friend Milja (another Porticus Fellow) and caught up with my long lost cousin Carmel. God it was good to see her - she left home when I was very young and travelled the world, settling in Scotland, and I only saw her briefly a few years ago at a Christmas function. So this time we packed two lifetimes into one conversation.

I couldn’t shake the feeling I was at the very end of the earth, but what a lovely end it was. Checked out the universities and if there might be any postdoc opportunities there; and passed my card around.

Today I’m looking forward to seeing Katharine Moody from Bristol, who’s doing similar research to me. We’ll pretend to be all macadamic and whatnot but mostly we’ll just muck around and complain about being students. It’ll be cool.

I’m now at the airport, having had yet another full experience. I am leaving these photos as memories of good times outside the presentations and the listening and macadamic talk, of being surrounded by great people.

Photo one is of Mia Lovheim, Heidi Campbell and Mark Johns. The three of us did the panel on online religion together and we work great as a group. It’d be great to work with them again. Luckily they’re all Facebook fans.

Leo, Maia and Malene and I, together with a big bunch of lads from UK, Denmark and Germany, spent an entire night at a small pub in the centre of town. It felt just like it should at the time. Leo and Malene are married to each other, and Malene and I are both working on a Scollon framework of web research, so we had much to talk about. Maia is also married, which is a shame.

The conference was held at ITU, a one-building university behind the Uni of Copenhagen. The atrium was six levels high, and as you can see, rooms jut out into the space from various floors. It looked like it was built by the Lego Corporation.

  Tim is another online religion guy, studying the presence of institutional church online. He looks like a tall skinny Harry Potter, and talked a bit like him, so I’m sure my daughter would have loved him. This is taken outside a store devoted to ACDC. Like, umm, some Melbourne rock band or something.

And of course there was Lego. Lots of Lego.

Heidi Campbell has set up a wiki for those interested in researching religion online. It can be found here, but this is also a useful link to it: http://tinyurl.com/nmrwiki