News > This 'slow traveller' lost his job for refusing to fly home

This 'slow traveller' lost his job for refusing to fly home

Gianluca Grimalda's employer, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a think tank based in Germany, ordered him at short notice to wrap up his fieldwork in Bougainville off the coast of Papua New Guinea in the southwestern Pacific and return to his desk — or lose his job. The ultimatum effectively required Grimalda, a climate researcher and self-styled “slow traveller,” to promptly board a flight back to Europe. He refused and was fired.