Tag Archives: Conferences

So, all the conferences are cancelled. Now what?

So, all the conferences are cancelled. Now what?

Conferences are a major part of an academic life, of researcher lives, for networking and many other reasons. Often, conferences are where we connect with others in our discipline or methodological community, where we meet people, make contacts, expand our thinking, or where we share our research and our developing ideas. But with the advent […] … learn more→

Surviving the conference marathon

Surviving the conference marathon

So, you’ve found the call for papers, and submitted an abstract, been accepted, got your faculty funding or organised some extra shifts to get the cash, registered, booked travel and a lovely/scummy room, and decided which shoes will make your presentation really pop. My first conference outside my university was a big one at a […] … learn more→

Choosing a conference

Choosing a conference

I’ve recently been asked how new PhDers ought to go about choosing academic conferences. Here goes… Because conferences are discipline specific, you really do need to talk with your supervisor and your peers about which are the best conferences to go to. Cop out? OK. Got me. I’ll try to do better. I actually have […] … learn more→

Conference small talk – the definitive guide

Conference small talk – the definitive guide

Making small talk with someone who’s just given a talk, whether at a conference or at a colloquium or invited talk, can feel intimidating, especially if you’re a student or early in your academic career. But as someone who’s currently spending a lot of time on the opposite side of that divide, I’ve realized that […] … learn more→

Making the most of your conference money

Making the most of your conference money

For an academic, participating in conferences is important for lots of reasons: sharing research and having it critiqued, building networks, identifying collaboration opportunities, and staying up to date with advances in the field. For PhD students there are additional advantages: you can use conferences to make your name known outside your immediate geographical area, potentially […] … learn more→

Why I love academic conferences

As I write, I’ve just returned from the annual meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, a vibrant interdisciplinary conference of 900. I’ve attended that meeting for nearly 25 years — from graduate school through the tenure track, and while pregnant, nursing, and corralling toddlers. In part, that’s because 20 years ago at this […] … learn more→

A mid-conference musing

I’m in Queensland and it’s hot. As you’d expect in a tropical state -it’s hot but not too humid. I go back to England this coming weekend where it’s not exactly warm, so I am not complaining about high 20C. One of the consequences of hot weather is thirst. In hot weather, you do have […] … learn more→

Academic freedom overseas: Hopes and obstacles

Early in 2013, I was appointed the first full professor of psychology at the University of the South Pacific, which serves more than 25,000 students throughout the 12 island nations in this vast and often breathtakingly beautiful part of the world. It was a late-career adventure for me and my wife. Full professorships are rare […] … learn more→

In praise of the small conference

As a PhD student it is easy to get starry-eyed over large conferences. You know the ones I mean. The ones with attendance figures of seven thousand, with stellar keynote casting and hotel spaces booked up three years in advance. For five or six days ‘the big names’ are chased by the non-tenured for their […] … learn more→

So you want to organize a conference?

I\’ve always known that writing my dissertation was the most all-consuming period of my academic career. Nothing else came close to the sustained effort required for that task. Nothing, that is, until I decided to organize an academic conference. That conference commemorated the 50th anniversary of Japan Study, a partnership between Waseda University at Tokyo […] … learn more→