My career has been about the wellbeing of people, communities and organisations. Now I'm moving my family to Texas to learn how another country looks after its own.
I'm Rainer Mere, a psychologist and doctoral researcher from Tallinn, spending the 2026–27 academic year at the University of Texas at Austin as a Fulbright Visiting Student Researcher. This site is the home base for that year: the research underneath it, and Kirjad Austinist, the letters I write from inside it. Right now it's all beginning: the boxes, the paperwork, the goodbyes. How it ends, I have no idea.
The newsletter
Kirjad Austinist
Letters from Austin. They live here, and they can land in your inbox too.
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The year
A family, a new country, and a year to learn a place from scratch. The story, as it unfolds.
The Fulbright Year → -
The work
A PhD on why the same good programme turns out so differently from one community to the next, run inside a five-country EU research project.
About & Research → -
The letters
Kirjad Austinist: letters from inside the year. Read them here, or have them sent to you.
Newsletter →