We make this path by walking: The practices and principles of the First International Working-Class Academics Conference

The values of an academic conference might best be defined by the themes of that conference, the disciplines covered and the intended level of delegation. In almost every case we had experienced as a working-class academics organizing group, these were only surface changes, and the entire conference process remained the same across disciplines. Such academic process and practice appear rooted in an archaic series of expectations and conventions that insist on a certain way of being in the Academy. To create an inclusive space in practice and process that goes beyond inclusion as merely themes, but exclusion as actual practice, took reimagining. This article outlines the ways in which we attempted to shift beyond the conventional to create an alternative conference approach that challenged exclusion, actively sought meaningful inclusion and disrupted a culture of conformity. Our focus was on working class academics, as a body of people huge in number, diverse in background but continually obscured in language, policy and practice.

Doing Queer in the Everyday of Academia: Reflections on Queering a Conference in International Law

The pioneering 1990s movement in critical theory has generated path-breaking scholarship seeking to queer law. Efforts to queer international law have produced important research uncovering the role of international law as a performative discourse and as a transnational governance framework reproducing gendered and sexual hegemonies. However, these efforts have done very little to destabilize the structures and workings of the very site where international law is theorized and taught: the university. Queering international law has mostly entailed looking at how the state, international organizations, international lawyers, scholars, and civil society produce or resist the heteronormative matrix, “that grid of cultural intelligibility through which bodies, genders, and desires are naturalized.” But what about the role of the university and its everyday routines––themselves byproducts of the aforementioned matrix––in reproducing and/or resisting (gendered) hierarchies and exclusions? We have raised this question as young scholars involved in organizing a week-long event on queer methods in international legal scholarship. The present essay is a first attempt at grappling with what the queering of an academic conference in international law meant for us, and for the university itself. It echoes a recent trend in scholarship on queer pedagogies, which, however, remain mostly silent on practices of scientific exchange. By reflecting on our efforts to queer a workshop in the field of international law, we also hope to inspire others to pursue their own queer processes of knowledge production.

Expressing Lesser Relevance in Academic Conference Presentations

While marking importance and relevance in academic discourse has been a widely researched topic, markers of lesser significance have so far been understudied. The article therefore focuses on some of the discoursal means of expressing lesser importance in conference presentations. The corpus of the study comprises recordings of 20 presentations in English at international linguistics conferences by speakers of various cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The methodology follows Deroey and Taverniers’s (2012) study of lecture discourse, whereby depending on the way lesser importance is expressed, the markers are grouped under five categories. Their methodology is checked against the data provided by the transcriptions of the conference recordings to ascertain the extent to which it is applicable to other spoken academic genres. The ultimate objective is to provide steppingstones for interpreting information and distinguishing between what is important and relevant and less so in conference presentations, as well as for the identification of presenters’ motivation for employing this type of metadiscourse.

Climate Sadness: The Fragile Beauty of Tonlé Sap

Tonlé Sap is the large fresh water lake-river near the geographic center of Cambodia. Visiting Tonlé Sap, following an academic conference in Phnom Penh, demanded a response at a personal and more visceral human level. Writing this poem attempted to express disquiet beyond academic examination of the biophysical dimensions of Tonlé Sap. The poem is sad for Tonlé Sap, for Cambodia, and implicitly for all of us on this planet. For thousands of years people have lived around Tonlé Sap, adapting to weather, the flow of water from mountain to sea, and the changing ebb and flow of civilizations. Anthropogenic sea level rise challenges all of this human history, unnecessarily.

Frequency and characteristics of promissory conference abstracts, i.e. abstracts without results, accepted at Cochrane Colloquia 1994-2020

Background The purpose of a conference abstract is to summarize the main points of a research-related report that will be presented at an academic conference. However, some conferences accept and publish abstracts without results, which is contrary to the basic idea of a conference abstract as a dissemination tool. A conference abstract without results included is called a “promissory abstract”. This study aimed to analyze the frequency and characteristics of promissory conference abstracts, i.e. abstracts submitted without results, accepted at Cochrane Colloquia. Methods We analyzed 8297 conference abstracts accepted at 25 Cochrane Colloquia, organized in 1994–2020, which were publicly available on the website of the Cochrane Library. Two authors screened abstracts to identify promissory abstracts. We extracted characteristics of promissory abstracts. Results Among abstracts accepted for Cochrane Colloquia, 8.7% were promissory; 475 (66%) were accepted as poster presentations, 241 (34%) as oral presentations and 1 as a workshop. The median number of authors in promissory abstracts was 4 (interquartile range: 3 to 6 authors). In 245 (34%) promissory abstracts, affiliations of authors were not reported. The authors were most commonly affiliated with the following countries: UK (472; 36%), Canada (N = 123; 26%), China (N = 76; 16%), United States (N = 66; 14%) and Australia (N = 53; 11%). There were 512 (71%) promissory abstracts in which study design was not reported. Conclusion Promissory abstracts were commonly accepted at Cochrane Colloquia. Such abstracts deserve further attention, as they are detrimental in terms of the dissemination of new knowledge presented at a conference. Conference organizers could ask authors to update the abstract results subsequently to enable the dissemination of information presented at a conference.

4th International Academic Conference “Liturgical Practices and Hieratic Arts Nowadays: Prospects for the Development of Research Area” (Krasnodar, November 9–12, 2020)

The paper analyses the findings of the 4th International Academic Conference. The academics reported new information on the current state of religious practices of different faith communities, as well as identified the hieratic signs in the context of secular art. The reporting researchers also explored the state of the liturgical canon in a current religious practice and reviewed the sacral aspect of human life in the context of traditional religious practices. The scholars also discussed the role of hieratic art in community life, its educational and enlightening capacity, and the modern forms of representation of the sacred. For the fourth time, the common subject of the study brings together art historians, historians, culture researchers, educators, psychologists, theologians, philosophers, and a number of persons involved in spiritual enlightenment and education.

National Academic Conference “Ivan Bunin’s Russia and the Culture of the Russian Sub-Steppe” (dedicated to the 150th anniversary of Ivan Bunin) (Yelets, September 24–26, 2020)

The academic event was dedicated to two anniversaries: 150th birthday of the Nobel prize winner Ivan Bunin and the 20th anniversary of the transformation of Yelets State Pedagogical Institute into Yelets State Ivan Bunin University. The key objective of the conference was to discuss new trends in the study of the artistic heritage of the great Russian writer, analyze the academic and creative achievements of outstanding persons of literature, philosophy, education, and culture connected with the Russian sub-steppe. Participants’ papers were devoted to the study of literary, journalistic and correspondence heritage of Ivan Bunin and other writers in the context of cultural and artistic continuum of the Russian sub-steppe region.

National Academic Conference with International Participation “Development Policy in a Digitized Society” (Krasnodar, October 22–23, 2020)

National Academic Conference with International Participation was held at Kuban State University. The participants discussed the impact of digitalization on various aspects of political relations in modern society. The conference was attended by political scientists, philosophers, economists, sociologists, and philologists, resulting in the interdisciplinary nature of the discussions. The paper offers an analytical summary of the most interesting reports and the fundamental academic issues raised by the speakers.