{"id":723,"date":"2024-07-22T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-22T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/hasspgrblog\/?p=723"},"modified":"2024-07-08T20:19:00","modified_gmt":"2024-07-08T19:19:00","slug":"returning-in-person-conference-attendance-in-the-shadow-of-covid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/hasspgrblog\/2024\/07\/22\/returning-in-person-conference-attendance-in-the-shadow-of-covid\/","title":{"rendered":"Returning in Person: Conference Attendance in the Shadow of Covid"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In June 2024, I attended the 29th Regional Southwest and Wales Postgraduate Religion and Theology Conference at St Padarn\u2019s Institute in Cardiff. It was the first conference I had attended in person since July 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I began my PhD in 2019. At the time, I had lived in Exeter for five years: the first three while I was studying for my undergraduate degree, and the second two while I was studying for my Masters by Research. I did not know when I started that before my first part-time year was up, I would have moved to London to become a distance learner because of the impending (first) lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a convenient time to become a distance learner. Everything was going online, and accommodations were being made in many areas of life for working from home, including in academia. Accommodations previously made for distance learners were now required by everyone, so more attention was given them. What was more, conferences were rapidly being altered to take place online, or cancelled altogether if such a thing was not possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, I was on the committee for the 25th Regional Southwest and Wales Postgraduate Religion and Theology Conference, which was initially due to take place in Exeter. This ended up being the second conference I would attend online (the first being Popular Visual Media & the Bible, organised by Zanne Domoney-Lyttle and Rebekah Welton). Over the next four years, I would attend four more conferences, all either purely online or hybrid, as well as countless online or hybrid research seminars both for my department and for the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion. Then, after four years (and a missed opportunity to attend a conference in person because it, in June 2023, aligned with the first time I contracted Covid-19), I was back to attend a conference in person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Online and hybrid conferences are a very different experience to attending a conference in person. Online conferences are cheaper (though not always free), easier, and much more convenient than attending a conference in person. For one thing, you do not have to factor in travel time and can sleep in your own bed afterwards. Online and hybrid conferences can also be truly global in a way that purely in-person conferences will always find difficult. One online conference I attended in 2023 and will again in 2024 was spread over three days and catered to a different time zone each day, meaning both attendees and presenters from all over the world could meet and discuss their research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main benefit I found between attending a conference in person versus online was what happens when the research isn\u2019t being presented. In between panels, there is an opportunity to talk to other attendees, to discuss papers further with their authors, and to network with other researchers. Rather than having to remember after the fact to email a presenter with whom you want a further conversation, you can walk up to them over tea or coffee (opportunity allowing) and talk to them there and then while the topic is fresh in both of your minds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will be forever grateful that so many conferences are available, either online or hybrid, since the lockdown made such accommodations necessary. As a distance student, it means that I can cheaply and conveniently engage with research and share my own. However, I remain grateful that I had the opportunity to attend a conference in person in 2024 after four years because the conversations between the papers, even the ones not about research or academia, were so rich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Image copyright www.freepik.com<\/a><\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ellen Grace Lesser (she\/her) is a Theology and Religion PhD student studying at the University of Exeter. She works within the field of science and Christian theology. She is currently investigating the relationship between the Christian God and nonhuman animals using an original metaphysical framework called process pansyntheism. Her research interests include nonhuman animal theology, process theology and philosophy, and religion and visual culture (particularly in the science fiction and fantasy genres). She has been published in Studies in Christian Ethics<\/em> and Theology<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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