In transit, undeliverable

A couple of days ago, I received an email from the University of Pisa informing me that my login and email will be deactivated soon. The funny thing is, I don’t even remember when or why this email account was created.

The number of email addresses one accumulates as an early-career researcher moving between institutions can be overwhelming. I realized that since completing my PhD five years ago, I’ve gone through three institutional email changes — each accompanied by the loss of data, correspondence, and contacts. I’ve also acquired a range of temporary logins and email addresses, for instance as a guest teacher at Copenhagen Business School or, more recently, as a visiting researcher at the University of Pécs.

These ever-changing emails can be frustrating. I still grieve the loss of some teaching materials from my PhD days that I forgot to forward in time. Occasionally, I receive important emails far too late: they are mistakenly sent to my University of Helsinki or University of Tyumen addresses, both no longer work.

At some point, I will probably create a proper professional email outside institutional systems, perhaps linked to this site. But for now, I am still hesitant — not sure I want to add yet another address to the long list I’ve already had.

Maybe, as a first step, I could at least find out what I was doing at the University of Pisa.