Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Anyone with an interest in 'rethinking academic conferences' is welcome to join this blog. You don't have to be a professor or lecturer, or even be affiliated to an academic institution. Just drop me a line indicating your willingness to contribute along with some idea of why you're interested. If you don't want to contribute as a team member you can always just post a comment. I look forward to hearing what people have to say/write! :)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Brains on a stick!" Quite evocative.

I was intrigued by the title at once, since we just pitched an idea for a working conference for 2009 that would be based on the premise that the people in the seats would be making contributions to plenary sessions and would be significantly responsible both for the direction and resolution of the conference and the shape of the conference publication. In other words, instead of sitting in an audience being lectured to and awaiting one's chance to do the same (and really NOT listening to the presentations), the "audience" would be expected to engage the conference content and be the conference.
It always amazes me that we teach our graduate students that lecturing endlessly is counterproductive in producing intellectual stimulation, and yet we make them attend and participate in these behaviors in conferences.
Go figure!

Dougald Hine said...

Hi Anthony,

I'll be interested to follow this blog - and hopefully contribute at some point - from the perspective of what we're doing at the School of Everything. If the tools we're building can make it easier to organise alternatives to the typical academic conference, that would please me greatly.