Conference! The very word is like a bell... I have been to about 150, large
and small, in about twenty different countries. They haven’t run out of interest yet.
Academic conferences have certainly changed. Many are more professionally organized
and therefore more expensive. They
have heavier crops of papers, as university managers have demanded more
publications. But that means attendance
is spread more thinly; young presenters can get very thin audiences. Perhaps I’m suffering from nostalgia,
but I think most conferences have less debate than they used to, and fewer
surprises. I’ve developed a
two-paper standard: if I hear two papers that impress me, it’s a good conference.
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| Gender & Health Conference, Montréal 2012 |
Some things don’t change. Conferences are an institution, a basic part of the collective life of academic workers. They are a display of recently-born knowledge and a site for exchange of ideas. At the simplest level they provide an important meeting place (essential in a country like Australia; and essential internationally). They generate solidarity for a workforce that is often isolated, and under neoliberal pressure is becoming more individualized.
There is a sadder side too. A conference is also a register of prestige, in which famous
Names attract more than their share of attention. I once heard a story about Seymour Lipset, a US political
sociologist who was a celebrity when I was a student, unclipping his name-badge
at the end of the day and throwing it towards the graduate students, for them
to scramble after. I can’t say if
this is true; the only time I tried to hear him, I couldn’t get in the door because of the crowd.
Meanwhile people with good ideas but without celebrity can pass unnoticed. Organizers trade on celebrity, of course, in selecting keynote speakers, and probably that helps bring in the numbers. But we need more mechanisms for recognizing the less recognized; that will keep the numbers.
Meanwhile people with good ideas but without celebrity can pass unnoticed. Organizers trade on celebrity, of course, in selecting keynote speakers, and probably that helps bring in the numbers. But we need more mechanisms for recognizing the less recognized; that will keep the numbers.
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| Hombres y Políticas de Violencia, VI Congreso de la AMEGH, Ciudad Juárez 2012 |
At their best, conferences can crystallize an intellectual
movement. This doesn’t happen
often, but is exhilarating when it does.
I have been to some like that: the conferences in the early 1970s that
marked a generational change in Australian sociology; the conference that
pioneered African research on masculinities in the 1990s.
Conferences can also grapple with major social issues - gender-based violence, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, educational inequality - and these allow researchers to meet practitioners and social movement activists.
Most
conferences, inevitably, are like most other
conferences. There will be speeches
by well-known visitors, inspiring or entertaining if they know their business; there
will be some good papers with new ideas or notable data, a lot of OK
papers with
familiar ideas or limited data, and a few papers that really shouldn’t
have
been listed. There will be
frustrating time-table clashes, and afterwards you will hear of the
really good
papers that you didn’t notice on the programme. The coffee will be
mediocre and the snacks fattening.
Academic conferences can be hard to decode, even
alienating. Everyone seems to know
everyone else, except you. The
timetable will be hard to understand and the rooms hard to find. (I was once at a conference where the
best sessions were, literally, a tram-ride away; at another where there was an
intoxicating blend of post-structuralism and builder’s rubble, as the venue was
being renovated at the time.)
So here is my advice to newcomers:
So here is my advice to newcomers:
First, go! Go
to the conference, you will usually hear at least two good papers. Be energetic, go persistently to the sessions, and a
fair variety of them, to get a broad sense of what is happening in the
field. Go with a friend, preferably two or three. Then
you can cover clashing sessions, and more important, share your dismay and your
discoveries.
Second, offer a paper if you have something substantial to
report. Don’t offer an
insubstantial paper ‘just to get the experience’, it doesn’t work. When you do offer a paper, you will
have about 10 minutes to speak. This
is very short. Therefore don’t
spend any time on Introductions, Literature Reviews, Theoretical Frameworks, or
Methodological Considerations. I
have sat in sessions where the poor young presenters spent so long on their
Introduction they never got to their first substantive point. CUT TO THE CHASE!! The paper presentation should be: I did
this (2 minutes), I found this (4 minutes), its significance is this (4 minutes),
and your time is up! Rehearse
beforehand, speaking slowly not quickly.
You will get the hang of it.
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| Junior & senior, Asia Pacific Sociological Association, Manila 2012 |
Third, be bold.
A conference is for conferring, so confer. Don’t be shy, go up to senior people and introduce yourself, even
the celebrities. Take them off for
coffee, if you know a decent espresso bar, otherwise for a cup of tea. If someone has given an interesting
paper, shake their hand and tell them so, get their email address, and give
them yours. (Experienced academics
take cards so they don’t get writer’s cramp.) Go to the conference reception and do the same there. Breakfast meetings are often the best of all, and definitely the healthiest.
I also have some thoughts on how to democratise conferences, but they will have to wait for another post.