Welcome and thank you for joining me on this adventure. For the newbies, you can catch up on previous posts: first blog post, second blog post here, third blog post here, fourth blog post here, fifth post here, sixth post here, seventh post here, eighth post here, the ninth post here, tenth post here, eleventh post here, twelfth post here, thirteenth post, fourteenth post here and fifteenth post

The reviews are in! Panic! Help! Fire in my head!

It turns out that there is some good truth in the saying that “all good things come in pairs”. Imagine that on the morning of 1 June 2026 at the start of the Tourism, Memory and Heritage 2026 Conference that I am hosting, I also receive an email from the NWO Vidi team with the reviews on my proposal. The 3 days of conference is now in the middle of the 5 working days required to write and submit my rebuttal.

With my mind already full with conference admin and logistics, I was honestly terrified a bit to open the NWO email and to log into the grant system to download the review. It took me a good 5 minutes of self-debate and self-motivation to gather the courage to download the reviews. I was anxious to see what the reviewers thought of my proposal and I was also bracing myself for the worst. I had to do a quick scan to calm my beating heart. The first quick reading showed that the three reviewers can be crudely categorised into the, a) critical critic; b)friendly critic c) friendly supporter. I need to take time to read and reread the reviews a couple of times while allowing it to settle. I do wonder how I am going to find the mental space to deal with reviewer comments and write a strong rebuttal.