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.
My school gave me a little funding to present at my third academic conference in 2023, in Canberra. It opened with a professor, a white lady, speaking about racism. An uncomfortable number of projects focused upon asylum seeker and refugees were led by white researchers, and I couldn’t work out the polite way to raise my hand and ask why. I opened my paper by introducing myself as a young, Hokkien-Chinese woman, in a space that left me feeling incredibly exposed whilst doing so. The highlight of the week was, again, a discussion of First Nations knowledges: a conversation with First Nations public servants, the insights from which have continued to orient me in my own career.
Wondering if you will still have employment next year? Struggling with the neoliberal academic industrial complex and its work-genocide-redundancies balance? Don’t stress! Distract yourself — wash your delicates!
You should write accessibly, but not too informally. You should write clearly, but avoid making yourself too visible in the process: contort your sentences into passive voice, because it’s still a little odd to use ‘I’. You should write to share your insights, and ultimately, have some kind of impact on the world — but also, make sure you publish in the high-ranked, prestigious academic journals that policymakers and community members, will not be able to access. You should write a book, a monograph, but only if you’ll be taking it to an academic publishing house, so that it can be sold for three hundred and forty-two dollars. You should write a book chapter for a book that will be so exorbitantly pricey, you won’t be able to purchase it yourself, although you may be able to beg your university library to do so (if, and only if, it is assigned as a reading in a course that is being taught at the university, though).
This is how we’re taught to present our research at conferences —
One. Start with an introduction, your research questions and aims.
Two. Move onto a literature review. More is more: fit as much information as you can onto your slides. Reduce the font size if necessary.
Next up, your methodology. Explain the important stuff: how you collected the data, who your participants were. Explain the not-very-important stuff, too: what software you used, because the audience will be really interested in whether you chose to use NVivo, or MaxQDA. Note how long each interview was. Skip any discussion of ethics, though.
Finally, you’ve made it to the juicy part: findings! Speed up just a little, because the Chair has just politely signalled that you have five minutes to go. Read every dot point on your slides, to keep yourself focused – don’t look at the audience, not even once. When the Chair gently raises their hand to note that you’re onto your last minute, just note that you’ll be quick, and then finish your sentence,
And then move on to your discussion and limitations section. Remember, if you don’t make eye contact with anyone, you won’t be distracted by the ways their eyes are glossing over. Remember, if the session run overtime, the last speaker can simply forego question time — the opportunity to receive feedback.
It’s really very important to have safeguards and risk management strategies, so that scholarly research is not causing more harm than good. That is why it is crucial to secure institutional ethics approval from institutions that are comfortable investing in programs to develop arms. That is why it is so imperative to outline the potential effects of our projects upon our participants — lest anyone gets hurt. We’d hate for there to be any erosion of human rights, destruction of land and waterways, catastrophic loss of not only lives but entire lineages. We can’t possibly allow this university, or the academe writ large, to be perceived as contributing to any dispossessive, genocidal activity.
r/tooafraidtoask:
Why do we call them conference papers if they’re really just verbal presentations, often accompanied by slide decks? Are scholars really out here writing up what regular humans would call, uh, speeches, into proper little research articles — even for those conferences that do not publish booklets?
r/explainlikeimfive:
If academics don’t get paid for writing journal articles, nor for peer-reviewing journal articles for publication, nor for coordinating or attending conferences, nor for organising panels, nor for serving on ethics review committees, nor for editing special issues —
but, simultaneously, will not be competitive for promotions, nor taken seriously as experts, if they don’t keep themselves busy with all of these side-quests —
how do academics make a living? How do academics live?
r/mildlyinfuriating:
To be a researcher at a university, you have to go on sabbatical, to be able to relieve yourself of the teaching and administrative duties that prevent you from progressing your research? Even academics have to take study leave?