🔎 Guest: The PhD scholar & researcher, meet Kaisu from Finland
Imagine being from a place where anywhere in the world is a long way from "home"
Kaisu Koskela, is a nomad for more than 20 years from Northern Finland near the Arctic Circle, who always finds a way to extend her stay abroad. For instance, at 18, she got a job at a bar and learned to be a bartender in Greece. Since then, she was a hairdresser in London, taught English in Nepal, cataloged the use of medicinal plants among tribes in Tanzania, and studied at universities in Malta, The Netherlands, Singapore, Australia, Denmark, and Ireland.
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When she started her career in academia, she started to take advantage of the fact that she literally only needed a laptop to write her research. Now, she is an anthropologist and an academic, starting a new postdoctoral research position at Radboud University. While she is going to be based at the university in The Netherlands, she will still be seen around the world at the digital nomad circuit doing her research.
Kaisu will research the new digital nomad visas popping up worldwide and how the digital nomad community is receiving them. As she says, "studying her own tribe is an anthropologist's wet dream!”
🫶 How do you take care of yourself when nomading?
I am terrible at any routine except my morning coffee and my nutrition.
Above: Morning coffee in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
My main habit is intermittent fasting from dinner to lunch the next day, giving my digestive system a chance to rest and making life on the move much easier as I don't have to look for food first thing every morning. I also try to book accommodations with a kitchen to cook at least one of the day's meals at home and to include as many fresh veggies as possible. This way, I can get my 5-a-day regardless of what I eat out at night!
Additionally, I love supporting local markets because I can pick up vegetables grown nearby, often directly from the producer and that the choice of what's in the season already dictates what I have to cook that week.
If you are more like a routine person, explore how Michelle Coulson picks up a new habit every time she moves to a new place.
✴️ How do you find COMMUNITY as a nomad?
While getting to know local life, culture, food, and traditions is why I travel, I don't always agree with people saying they avoid 'nomad bubbles.' In digital nomad hubs, you can find connections at a more personal level with like-minded communities. For this reason, I recommend seeking the company and connection of other digital nomads, especially early on in the nomading journey.
Finding these places that facilitate meeting other nomads has made all the difference for me in my life on the road. Social coworking spaces like Coworking Bansko or KoHub, coliving spaces like Sun and Co or Nine Coliving, and even paid travel groups like Hacker Paradise, and Unsettled have given me such a wide network of other nomad friends!
I am excited about how traveling and working abroad encouraged me to pursue an academic career focused on a lifestyle that I admire, I have experienced, and that needs better recognition. Now that I've accepted a postdoctoral position that will keep me in the Netherlands for the majority of the next few years, my life is about to change a bit. Still, I am happy that I will share this journey with my partner, Nicki Frandsen, who I met in a coliving space in Spain.
Above: Celebrating Carnaval with my boyfriend despite the raging Calima sandstorm at Nine Coliving, Tenerife.
🌱How do you consider the PLANET (and minimize your impact)?
Academia is not traditionally a field considered location independent, but with some sacrifices on traditional career advancement, it can be the best digital nomad job ever! I am not tied to any time zone or strict working hours, I hardly ever have meetings to attend, and I don't even need a very good or stable internet connection, so I really have been able to choose where I go quite freely.
For instance, Nicki and I pick a continent for 3-6 months at a time and then travel by road, rail, and sea as much as we can within it. An ideal time for us would be about a month to 6 weeks in one location with all the social and professional facilities we need, and then 1-2 weeks of travel by land through more off-grid locations to relocate to another destination for 4-6 weeks again. This allows us to feel more responsible for our environmental impact as we try to slow travel and work.
Likewise, another of our #DigitalNomads, Christen Scalfano has written about the importance of traveling by land. Check out Christen's Digital Nomad Story.
These are the things that I enjoy about traveling by land:
seeing the landscape change gradually from mountain to seaside, or from jungle to desert
crossing a land border in local transport with locals. Seeing everyone dash to change the last of their pennies to the next currency and hearing languages mix around you.
staring out the window and observing a split second of life at the passing towns that most of us never have the time to stop at.
Below: Traveling by motorbike on the coastal highway in Central Vietnam.
>>> Check out Kaisu’s networking groups Academic Digital Nomads on Facebook and Researchers and Scholars of Digital Nomadism group on LinkedIn for researchers, academics, educators, students, and research companies working on research projects related to digital nomadism, remote work, and/or location independent lifestyles:
🔗Connect with Kaisu Koskela via her LinkedIn to learn more about following an academic career in digital nomadism 🔗
🔗 Want to hear more #DigitalNomadStories? Meet Juliana, visiting her 56th country!