I first presented at an academic conference in 2020, from my bedroom in my parent’s home, on a European morning. Deeply underwhelming, but let’s blame that on the panny-d, and a world only just getting comfortable with Zoom functions.
Unfortunately, I paid to attend my second academic conference in 2022. When the International Sociology Association’s World Congress is in town, and you’re a naïve little sociologist, it kind of feels like you have to be there — even when they’ve rejected your abstract. The registration fee was absurdly expensive. I took annual leave from my actual job to be there. No lunch was provided. Thousands of papers were delivered across hundreds of sessions, in rooms scattered between the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre and Crown. Some folks, having travelled across I’m not sure how many timezones, presented to audiences of, like, four people. The highlight of the week was a session titled Indigenous Sociology, Indigenous Lifeworlds, in celebration of the launch of The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous Sociology in print.