Activity: Practice Proposal for Conference Talk or Poster

Overview

Academic conferences are events where researchers share their work with each other through presentations. There are international, national, and regional conferences for every discipline. Some conferences attract thousands of attendees, while others may have fewer than 100, some are a single-day while others are multi-day.

Why Attend and Present at a Conference

Attending and presenting at conferences are a good way to:

• Keep up with cutting-edge research in your field
• Network with others
• Gain experience in presenting your research and getting feedback
• Build your professional standing and CV/resume
• Promote your research and publications

How to Find a Conference

There are thousands of academic conferences, symposiums, and meetings. To identify the most useful conferences for your discipline:

• Ask faculty, advisors, and peers in your department. Find out which conferences they regularly attend.
• Check the scholarly organizations in your discipline. Most official associations and societies host conferences.
• Follow important researchers and organizations in your field through social media, blogs, and discussion lists. Calls for conference papers and posters often appear in these outlets.
• Humanities and Social Sciences researchers can also subscribe to H-Announce, part of H-Net, Humanities & Social Sciences Online.

 

Activity: Practice a Proposal

Calls for Proposals (CFP) with theme(s), guidelines, proposal requirements (word count, format, etc.), and deadlines often come out more than a year ahead of a conference. Although proposal expectations vary from conference to conference, most proposals include a brief description of your presentation topic, its significance, and how it fits into the conference theme. The proposal makes the case of why the conference organizers should choose your presentation over others. Presentations can be in varied formats including research papers, lightning talks, panel discussions, and posters.

Sample presentation proposals:

• Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE)
• Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP)

Now practice writing your own proposal either for Scholars’ Studio, a quarterly opportunity for graduate students to present lightning talks on their research, or for another conference or event in your area of study.

For more information on conference proposals:

• Becker, Lucinda M. Presenting Your Research: Conferences, Symposiums, Poster Presentations and Beyond. Sage, 2014.
• Pete Etchells, The PhD’s Guide to Academic Conferences (Scientific American blog)