Why academics go to conferences

This is going to be posted on the Psychological Sciences blog once I am back in work, meant mainly for an undergraduate audience

From time to time a lecturer might not be on campus because they are 'at a conference'. In this post I am going to explain what academics do at conferences, why they go, and why undergraduate students should consider going to at least one conference during their time as a student. This post will of course be heavily based on my own experiences of going to conferences, and therefore biased towards psychology.

What is a conference?

Normally at a conference there will be a series of presentations (papers) from academics, and students, talking about their most recent research. There may also be poster sessions, themed symposiums when there are three or four papers on the same theme with additional time for discussion, and other ways to communicate research findings.

As well as the people giving presentations there will be others with an interest in the subject at the conference. Very often at any university there are a limited number of specialists in any particular field, at a conference there are very many experts in the same general area.

Conferences can be single day or longer. They are often based at universities and if multiple day conference delegates will normally stay in the local town, or sometimes in halls of residence on campus.

Learning about what is happening in the academic speciality

To get a paper (poster or other presentation) accepted at a conference one has to send an abstract, or sometimes an extended summary, to the conference organising committee. There will be some peer review of these abstracts, and depending on how many papers are submitted some choices are made about which presentations will be accepted for a conference.

It is, of course, worth noting that these presentations do not go through a full peer review process, and while in the current climate of promoting public engagement press releases may be written and sent out, conference papers should not normally be used as reference material.

With that caveat in mind conference papers are where new ideas are first tested in front of the academic community. So they are an excellent way to learn about the new ideas circulating in the specialist community, this might act as inspiration for future research directions. It is also an essential way to stay up to date in the field.

Testing out your new ideas and recent research

Giving a conference paper on research that you have just completed is a great way to test out the reaction to that research. It will give the presenter some ideas about what they need to do to publish the research in a peer reviewed journal article. While this developmental stage is not always necessary in writing up research it can be a very useful exercise. The majority of the audience at a conference can be classified as friendly critics, and as well as the formal question and answer session there is normally a chance to chat though ideas with people more informally.

Chatting to like minded academics

Several of the delegates spoke about being the only person interested in conceptual and historical issues at their university. This can be quite isolating at an intellectual level and being able to chat to people with more in common, academically, is very useful and can be therapeutic. At this conference there were a number of international delegates, sharing experiences with them can give a wider perspective to some of the issues faced.

Networking

With my new module on Gender and Sexuality starting next academic year it was very good to hear four papers on that topic. I hope to be in touch with all of those presenters in the near future, and am hoping to do a short video piece with one of them for use on the module. One delegate from the USA thought we had something in common academically and we will be chatting over email to see if anything concrete can come out of that.

This might be even more important for students, looking towards post graduate or post doctoral studies, or in professional areas looking for supervisors as part of their training.

The History and Philosophy of Psychology section has, some, student bursaries available, for students giving papers. This might be of interest to any students of our degree interested in pursuing a Conceptual and Historical Issues dissertation.