Postgraduate Culture and Opportunities: Conferences

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Postgraduate Culture and Opportunities
Conferences

• Kath Stevenson Stuart McWilliams
• Queens University Belfast

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Conferences?

• For delegates
• Potential waste of time/resources
• Stressful
• For organisers
• Time consuming
• Organisational nightmare
• Financial difficulties

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Conferences?

• For delegates
• Opportunity to present research feedback
• Snapshot of other contemporary research
• Networking
• Can counter academic isolation
• Conference experience

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Conferences?

• First off, say "cool, wet, grass" slowly, ten
  times... Welcome to the stressful hell that is
  organising conferences! Never say that
  medievalists don't learn transferable skills!
  Sometime late on Saturday, most of your anxieties
  will slip away and you'll start getting that warm
  glow of satisfaction about bringing like-minded
  people together to talk about shared interests.
  The stress you're experiencing now will disappear
  from your memories of the conference.

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Conferences?

• For organisers
• that warm glow of satisfaction
• CV
• Professional preparation
• Demystification of academia

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www.borderlines.ie
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www.qub.ac.uk/unknowing
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Preliminaries

• Assessing the field
• Timing
• Established events
• Niche potential audience
• Prospects for collaboration/merging
• Financial viability

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Preliminaries

• Implementation
• Conference team
• Early discussion with supervisors/staff
• Scale and scope
• Format

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Funding

• Institutional funding (internal)
• Home School
• Affiliated Schools interdisciplinarity
• Existing initiatives
• Postgraduate Office
• International Office

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Funding

• AHRC Student-Led Initiatives (www.ahrc.ac.uk)
• The aim of the Student-Led Initiative Scheme is
  to support the establishment of innovative
  collaborative research training programmes,
  originated by and run for postgraduate doctoral
  students. This scheme is part of the
  Collaborative Research Training scheme which
  provides pump-priming funds to support the
  provision of specialised subject - or discipline
  - specific research training which will enable
  institutions to offer such training to groups of
  students where it is not possible or
  cost-effective to provide the training in just
  one department or institution.
• The Student-Led Initiative Scheme provides
  awards of up to 2000 towards the costs of
  setting up a training project, activity or
  event. 

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Funding

• AHRC points to consider
• Rolling deadline
• Allowing time for resubmission
• Point of contact Ben Spratt b.spratt_at_ahrc.ac.uk
• Explicit training element desirable
• Not a prerequisite for a successful conference

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Funding

• Apply to every funding source available
• Tailor your proposal to each source
• Pay close attention to deadlines and criteria
• Detailed proposal with realistic budget
• Dont underestimate costs

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Budget Scaling
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Publicising the Conference

• Website
• Linked from host institution/school
• Regularly maintained
• Up-to-date contact information including email

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Publicising the Conference

• Issuing a Call for Papers
• Make use of established mailing lists and
  contacts
• Target relevant departments across a range of
  institutions
• Call for Papers listings (USA)
  http//cfp.english.upenn.edu/
• CARMEN network (Europe) http//carmen.eldoc.ub.ru
  g.nl/root/

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Programming the Conference
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After the Conference

• Conference report
• Options for publication if desired
• (e-publication journal special issue collected
  essays)
• Sustainability?

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A final thought on all those forms and reports...

• ...tell the truth, not the whole truth, and
  nothing which can be proven to be untrue
• Sir Humphrey Appleby