All entries for Monday 04 July 2022

'Following Living Things and Still Lifes in a Global World': Reflections on the conference

Writing about web page https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/hrc/confs/flt/

In this final post, Cheng Heand Camilo Uribe Bottareflect on their experience of organising the conference 'Following Living Things and Still Lifes in a Global World'.

Cheng: What do you feel about the conference in general?

Camilo: I think it was really successful. I feel happy that we managed to take the conference to the final stage, and our purpose is achieved—we managed to target at specific academic audience, and to invite scholars whose proposals we are interested to attend the conference. And the quality of the papers proves it.

Cheng: Yeah. The papers we received are quite diverse in terms of the topics, but they are all well related to the conference theme in different ways, which is nice.

Camilo: Even their approaches to their research are varied and show interdisciplinary methods. We got scholars from history, geography, art, biology, literature and so on. This shows the diversity of approaches to plants, animals and objects in academia now.

Cheng: Yes, that’s true. Actually what I felt right after the conference was that , I was so exhausted (laugh). We have attended many conferences before we organised one. But it was not until we did it on our own that I realised how much energy it took.

Camilo: Yeah yeah. We had stressful moments. One was when we had to decide whether to extend the Call for Papers deadline, another one was to decide the format of the conference—whether hybrid or online.

Cheng: Yes, because that would affect Call for Papers as well.

Camilo: Uh huh. We had to make the decision and to see if all the speakers would be fine with it. And eventually, there was potential technology issues when the conference was held online. This type of issues often happen, but when you were the organiser, the pressure was always there.

Cheng: Yes. I feel that when the conference is online, the stress of coping with technology is stronger than having face-to-face events. In terms of this, I’m wondering what was the most difficult thing for you throughout the whole process (of organising the conference)?

Camilo: I think the most difficult part was probably to have a clear idea of what you wanted to accomplish, like what topics/questions you wanted to address and make them sufficiently clear.

Cheng: Yes, it took a while for us to clarify it in the beginning.

Camilo: And another thing was to have a good keynote speaker who can open up the theme or summarise it well. We had a brilliant keynote speaker Prof. Cowie, who shared a wonderful paper that presents the goal of the conference and also well connected it with other conference papers. It was a great conclusion to the conference. Also our chairs were very nice and supportive to the panels.

Cheng: Yes, absolutely. Any other tips for PG students who would like to organise a conference?

Camilo: My suggestion would be: find a topic that you are really passionate about to be the conference theme.

Cheng: I would suggest to prepare everything in advance, and remember that accidents could happen.

Camilo: Yes!

Cheng: I feel it was a right decision to have an informal rehearsal with speakers, checking if there could be any technological issues.

Camilo: Yes that really helped save time during the conference.

David Lambert : 04 Jul 2022 19:37 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem