PRESENTING YOUR WORK AT CONFERENCES AND IN PUBLIC

1. PRESENTING YOUR WORK AT CONFERENCES AND IN PUBLIC Dr Caroline Gatrell, 2010

2. CONFERENCE PAPERS • Why present at conferences at all? • Negatives: • Socialising may be hard and not everyone has a mentor • Its scary • Its expensive • Positives: • Might help get conference fee paid for • Helps you define your research and gives you a deadline • Helps you meet like minded scholars • Others begin to know your work • Helps you get feedback

3. WHICH CONFERENCES? • Talk to your supervisor (s) • Big conference vs. smaller seminar/workshop? • Look at annual programmes: who spoke last year? • Investigate funding: from your department, conference may offer bursaries • Look carefully @ streams – does your topic area ‘fit in’? • Is there a doctoral stream you can join? Or should you try main academic streams or both? NB. Some ‘main’ streams encourage students

4. SUBMITTING YOUR PAPER • Look carefully @ what conference organisers want. • Some require either a ‘full’ paper, or a fully worked up developmental paper. • Some only want an abstract. • But all have specific forms of submission which must be followed • and most will send your paper out to referees. • Get supervisors and student colleagues to read your submission and give feedback before you send it. • Allow plenty of time

5. PAPER ACCEPTED: • Allow more time than you think you need to prepare it. • Try a dry run in front of student colleagues. • Decide how you are going to present it. • As a PowerPoint presentation? • As a paper which you read, without PowerPoint? • Find out from your supervisor what the convention is, in your field • Depending on how much time you are given to present, prepare to make 2 – 3 key points. • Plan to allow enough time for questions

6. PREPARATION • Check out what is available at your venue. Most places should have a projector and a computer in place these days – but they don’t always! • Even if you have been asked to e-mail your presentation in advance, remember your memory pen • Be sufficiently prepared so that you can give your paper without technology • If you plan to give handouts, get an idea from the conference organisers, or the chair of your stream, how many you will need. • Name and date them all! – this is your unpublished, original work.

7. PREPARATION • You don’t need lots of slides – just the minimum to illustrate your talk • Try and keep these simple, too much fuss can be distracting • Practice reading the paper out loud, preferably to others and to time. • Ensure it takes less time than you will be allocated on the day • Get others to ask you questions, so you are prepared for feedback on the day

8. ON THE DAY Spend time in your stream listening to others. Polite, and you get a sense of what others are doing, how effective the chair is and so on. Big audience less daunting if you have prepared well. Small number in audience may be really interested your topic and give good feedback Take your time and speak clearly and not too fast. Place feet flat on the ground so you are less tempted to fidget Avoid playing with keys, hair and jewellery Keep your eye on the time. If you go over it, a good chair will stop you.

9. QUESTIONS • Usually you give your paper and then others ask questions. A good chair should keep everyone to time and manage the questions on your behalf • Worth thinking in advance what questions you may be asked and how you will answer these • Make sure you have a pen and paper to hand to note down what people are asking – feed their questions back to them if unclear, so you address their points • Be prepared for some questioners to spend ages talking about their own topic/viewpoint before they get on to yours!

10. PRESENTATIONS AND ‘THE PUBLIC’ ‘Public’ speaking • Make sure you know what you have agreed to take part in beforehand • Simplify your message if you are not speaking to a specialist audience • Try out your talk to a sympathetic audience of non-specialists • Keep to time