In this post, Geoff Lewis explores some of the challenges that online conferences have posed for the research community as well as the possibilities these virtual events present for the future.
In this post Kabini Sanga & Martyn Reynolds discuss ideas of the conference as village informed by Oceanic wisdom.
In this post Bing Lu contemplates the new framework of power constituted in online conferences and calls to all conference community members to consider creative ways of practicing inclusive conferencing online.
In this post Kristy Kelly explains the value of using feminist frameworks as face-to-face gatherings move online.
In this post Johan Edelheim outlines why the role of the conference chairperson is so important and offers some advice for novice chairs.
In this post the Conference Inference editors review advice on writing conference abstracts and explore the underlying assumptions of this somewhat mysterious form of academic writing.
In this post James Burford builds on the Research Whisperer’s recent post on boundary-setting. He reflects on saying ‘no’ to conference opportunities.
Continue reading “Saying ‘no’ to conference opportunities (James Burford)”
In this post, the Conference Inference editors discuss what is involved in being a discussant at a conference, and consider the queerness of this role.
Academic conferences involve the coordinated movement (and coordinated stillness) of bodies across various kinds of spaces. Talking about the academic body and the research conference probably conjures images of a brightly lit room, and professionally dressed colleagues engaged in more or less erudite discussion. But, writes James Burford, what happens when the lights go out and the clothes come off?
Taking inspiration from Sara Ahmed’s work on queer phenomenology, Emily Henderson considers the role of tables at conferences
In her book Queer Phenomenology (QP), Sara Ahmed refers to the English-language idiom of ‘being treated like furniture’ to make the point that furniture is often positioned in the background of human interaction. To be ‘like furniture’ is to blend into the unnoticed, taken-for-granted objects that, according to a Ahmed’s phenomenological approach, in fact scaffold our lives. Continue reading “Conference tables: Reorienting Sara Ahmed’s ‘Queer Phenomenology’ towards embodied knowledge production (Emily F. Henderson)”
Conference Inference 