My blogging has been sluggish during a time of relentlessly bad news about job losses across the Australian higher education workforce (my customary solace of reading has been hard too). I wanted to look back on what has been collegial and nourishing during the last few months at work. As I started making a list, I realised that there was a common thread: online gatherings. With face-to-face meetings restricted, academics generously opened up events for free registrations. I have participated in several: Missing Conferences, Higher Education Scholars, Whisperfest, Council of Australasian Leaders of Learning and Teaching (CAULLT) Conference, and the History of University Life seminar series. (For those who are wondering how I found invitations, most were advertised via Twitter. Also note these were held in Australian Eastern Standard Time. I missed a lot of fantastic sounding international events).

This post is dedicated to the meta-conference Missing Conferences: Academic gatherings in a time of limited mobility which has shaped a lot of thinking about online conferences this year.

James Burford, co-founder of the wonderful Conference Inference blog (blogging the world of academic conferences), organised this Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) sponsored gathering back in September. I neglected to post about it at the time. Looking back at my Passion Planner diary (not a paid endorsement, just a tool I have found helpful for lightly journaling through a tumultuous year), my retreat from blogging makes sense: in September, I co-facilitated an intensive teaching development program, evaluated institutional teaching awards, had two creative writing assessment tasks due, celebrated four birthdays in our extended family, and took time off for school holidays.

The focus of Missing Conferences was asking questions about academic conferences in 2020:

The first question that we consider is whether conferences have gone missing at all? Is it possible that the routine work of face-to-face conferences has been distributed across new platforms for gathering academics and disseminating knowledge? What affordances do these new forms of gathering promise? What are their limits?

The second question we consider is this: conferences may be missing, but are we missing conferences? How do we feel as we erase plans from the calendar, cancel tickets and ask for refunds? When conferences go missing do we miss our geographically distant friends and colleagues? And when face-to-face conferences are missing what else are scholars missing out on?

International presenters included (with links to relevant blog posts on Conference Inference):

• Judith Mair – Conferences: you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone
• Agnes Bosanquet and Catherine Manathunga – Missing Conference Embodiment
• Tai Peseta and Catherine Manathunga – Missing Conference Keynotes
• Omolabake Fakunle – The Impacts of Doctoral Students Missing Conferences
• Emily Henderson – Care and Missing Conferences

The hashtag #MissingConferences captured some of the stimulating discussion:

@jiaburford tells us people are having quarandreams about conferences – anxieties, book sales, missing out, missing flights, apocalypses with a conference backdrop. What does this tell us about our attachments to conference conventionality? #MissingConferences

— Natalie Osborne (@DrNatOsborne) September 15, 2020

I'm an introvert… and even I miss networking at conferences!! I miss how it drives my motivation and new ways of thinking about teaching and research#MissingConferences pic.twitter.com/ItbmBk6eBt

— Mel Hayes 🇦🇺🦷👩‍🏫 (@drmelhayes) September 15, 2020

Up now: @AgnesBosanquet and Catherine Manathunga on "Missing conferences in the flesh". (pictured is Agnes)
Paper is derived from their research on the Academic Identities conference series and focusing on elements of embodiment. #missingconferences pic.twitter.com/Ch3oApdQAd

— Dr Tseen Khoo (@tseenster) September 15, 2020

Glad these points resonate @rellypops. Hence, the ?s at the end of my presentation: Can or should institutions consider including conferences as a mandatory part of doctoral programmes and how could this be managed? #MissingConferences https://t.co/YYxEkLRxFU

— Dr Omolabake Fakunle (@LabakeFakunle) September 15, 2020

Who is usually #MissingConferences @EmilyFrascatore on geography, class, race, caste, gender, ability, care. pic.twitter.com/dAcKSkhLbG

— Agnes Bosanquet (@AgnesBosanquet) September 15, 2020

Catherine Manathunga and I presented work in progress as part of a cultural history of the Academic Identities Conference.

Our research draws upon visual, aesthetic and sensory approaches to cultural research, and historical research in particular (Fitzgerald & May, 2016; Jütte, 2005; Grosvenor, 2012; Classen, 2012; Reinarz, 2014; Smith, 2004 and 2007; Damousi and Hamilton, 2017). These methodologies allow us to explore the sights, sounds, smells and feeling of attending the Academic Identities Conference series that has been running for 10 years. Using these techniques of cultural history (Burke, 2008; Marwick, 2006; Popkewitz et al., 2001; Rubin, 2002), this research project gathered oral histories from conference convenors, keynote speakers, delegates and PhD students and a range of visual and tangible artefacts such as conference programs and abstracts, photographs, twitter feeds and other memorabilia in an attempt to capture an intimate history of the embodied experience of travelling to conferences in England, Scotland, Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and Japan. We have explored the themes of place, sociality, embodiment, and sensory experience as they played out in the data we collected on each of the International Academic Identities Conferences from 2008 to 2018.

You can see our slides here:

Missing Conferences affirmed the value of scholarly gatherings, but also showcased the affordances of attending virtually (and how much we all enjoy sharing our working lives with pets).

Next post will recap the recent Higher Education Scholars gathering on Doing things with theory.