Conferencing
Last week I was at a conference in Leicester, home of the king of the car park, Richard III, last of the Plantagenets and victim of the worst Shakespearean smear job since Queen Gertrude of Denmark.
I had gone along to unveil some aspects of my new project to the German Historical Society. It's a conference group I quite like and I was pleased to be able to go. It's not ridiculously huge like the GSA conference in the US, which I always find to be almost impossible to navigate. That said, I'll probably end up in the US for that next year, trying out more new material. As I once said to some colleagues, I try not to go to these things if I don't have something new to say.
Generally I don't go to conferences beyond the AAEH, which for me is my home conference. The AAEH is always packed with good friends and colleagues from around Australia and New Zealand and it really is home turf. I look forward to going every 2 years. I'm already looking forward to next year's conference.
Otherwise, I simply don't have the funding or the inclination for around the world extravaganzas and I feel that flying 30 hours or more on a round trip to give a 20 minute paper most years is pretty much the dictionary definition of environmental vandalism. Not all of this is about my pathological fear of flying, which I have only just got a handle on. There's a certain type of academic that likes the aura of cosmopolitan worldliness that comes from frequent intercontinental travel. Good luck to them, but I'd rather write my stuff, build my thing at home, ship it out into the world and then close the door, go out walking with the fam or have a cup of tea and chat with Frau G. The scholarly circus can rule your life unless you're careful. If someone wants to engage with my work, it's there to be read. If they want to chat, they know my twitter handle.
But this year I was in the neighbourhood, so it made sense to head to this conference. And I could fly in a little over an hour from Düsseldorf to Birmingham and then catch a train up to Leicester. What could be easier?
At least that was what I thought. As usual, the German end was fine, but once I got to Birmingham, there'd been a train derailment on the train line I needed (goods train, no-one hurt), so it was a round-about bus tour to nowheresville, then back on a train. It was of course just bad luck, but the bus trip didn't help to dispel my sense that Britain can be a fairly grim place that has quietly sunk into poverty. The countryside is of course always lovely, but then it's hard to get green fields too wrong. But the urban centres look like the local councils are doing it tough.
In the end the delay meant that I missed the first key note and arrived in time for the reception, but in time to say a quick hello to a few fellow nineteenth century specialists (including Bodie A from Adelaide), quaff three glasses of red and then chat with Daniel S (with whom I'm editing a book series for Bloomsbury). We then retired to a pub with Moritz F and a few other characters, where I had 3 more pints before quietly nicking off to find a chippie at about 11pm for my first meal since the Weetabix at 7am. There's something about hot chips when you've had a few. Haute cuisine!
I went back to my B&B on Saxby Rd (or St or whatever). Actually it was just a B, as breakfast wasn't included. Nor was a bathroom (never fear, there was one across the hall), which I knew when I booked it. I always go cheap on accommodation when I'm conferencing (particularly since I've used my ARC funding for this calendar year). It drives Frau G mad to hear where I stay, but it doesn't matter to me. Whenever I'm in the room I've generally got my eyes closed and am sleep, so the Ritz is a bit lost on me.
I must have had a bad chip though, because the next morning I felt a shade off. A cup of tea more or less put me right. Actually I had no choice but to be on game, as I was speaking in the first session. When I arrived, to my surprise Andrew P was there, editor of CEH and a colleague / mate from the US. We had a quick debrief about the journal and then I headed in to speak.
The paper I gave was on Chulalongkorn's visit to the Kaiser and how that fit into European imperial rivalries. To start with, however, I gave an overview of the broader project. Although there was a goodly number of people at the paper, what pleased me most was that the 'right ears' were in the room. Nineteenth and twentieth century specialists with a good understanding of the intellectual terrain I was moving across. The questions were to the point and knowledgeable. I was particularly pleased that my materialist subtext wasn't lost, with Anna R from Warwick picking up on this theme and getting me to expand it to some of my other case studies, in particular Morocco. Andrew P gave me the chance to talk about my evidence base as well. All in all it was highly productive session that has encouraged me to keep the ball rolling.
This for me is the value of conferences. Not self validation or a victory lap, but bringing new, scratchy work into a room and having it beaten into shape by other historians. I always try and present drafts at conferences, so I can get a sense of how other people see the work and so I can work further on new material. I also try and offer 'big target' papers. It's no use bringing a historical miniature derived from arcane knowledge only you know about to a conference, because it's impossible for others to enter into the discussion. You're unassailable, but at the expense of having locked everyone out. Broad and bold papers on fresh work always get a conversation started.
The feedback on the project was good, and that will help carry me through while I work further on it. Of course, no-one comes up afterwards and tells you that they think you're wasting your time. But the engagement was more than politeness obliged.
The good thing about presenting in the first session was that for the rest of the conference, you can relax and engage with the papers without overcooking your own paper while waiting. It also meant I could enjoy the conference dinner (I had 2 amazing Indian meals while in Leicester), chatting to British Germanists that I generally don't get a chance to speak to.
You'd think that this would encourage me to got the Historikertag, Germany's biennial monster history conference which is in Münster next week (or something). But I'm not. I'm going to write instead.
I had gone along to unveil some aspects of my new project to the German Historical Society. It's a conference group I quite like and I was pleased to be able to go. It's not ridiculously huge like the GSA conference in the US, which I always find to be almost impossible to navigate. That said, I'll probably end up in the US for that next year, trying out more new material. As I once said to some colleagues, I try not to go to these things if I don't have something new to say.
Generally I don't go to conferences beyond the AAEH, which for me is my home conference. The AAEH is always packed with good friends and colleagues from around Australia and New Zealand and it really is home turf. I look forward to going every 2 years. I'm already looking forward to next year's conference.
Otherwise, I simply don't have the funding or the inclination for around the world extravaganzas and I feel that flying 30 hours or more on a round trip to give a 20 minute paper most years is pretty much the dictionary definition of environmental vandalism. Not all of this is about my pathological fear of flying, which I have only just got a handle on. There's a certain type of academic that likes the aura of cosmopolitan worldliness that comes from frequent intercontinental travel. Good luck to them, but I'd rather write my stuff, build my thing at home, ship it out into the world and then close the door, go out walking with the fam or have a cup of tea and chat with Frau G. The scholarly circus can rule your life unless you're careful. If someone wants to engage with my work, it's there to be read. If they want to chat, they know my twitter handle.
But this year I was in the neighbourhood, so it made sense to head to this conference. And I could fly in a little over an hour from Düsseldorf to Birmingham and then catch a train up to Leicester. What could be easier?
At least that was what I thought. As usual, the German end was fine, but once I got to Birmingham, there'd been a train derailment on the train line I needed (goods train, no-one hurt), so it was a round-about bus tour to nowheresville, then back on a train. It was of course just bad luck, but the bus trip didn't help to dispel my sense that Britain can be a fairly grim place that has quietly sunk into poverty. The countryside is of course always lovely, but then it's hard to get green fields too wrong. But the urban centres look like the local councils are doing it tough.
In the end the delay meant that I missed the first key note and arrived in time for the reception, but in time to say a quick hello to a few fellow nineteenth century specialists (including Bodie A from Adelaide), quaff three glasses of red and then chat with Daniel S (with whom I'm editing a book series for Bloomsbury). We then retired to a pub with Moritz F and a few other characters, where I had 3 more pints before quietly nicking off to find a chippie at about 11pm for my first meal since the Weetabix at 7am. There's something about hot chips when you've had a few. Haute cuisine!
I went back to my B&B on Saxby Rd (or St or whatever). Actually it was just a B, as breakfast wasn't included. Nor was a bathroom (never fear, there was one across the hall), which I knew when I booked it. I always go cheap on accommodation when I'm conferencing (particularly since I've used my ARC funding for this calendar year). It drives Frau G mad to hear where I stay, but it doesn't matter to me. Whenever I'm in the room I've generally got my eyes closed and am sleep, so the Ritz is a bit lost on me.
I must have had a bad chip though, because the next morning I felt a shade off. A cup of tea more or less put me right. Actually I had no choice but to be on game, as I was speaking in the first session. When I arrived, to my surprise Andrew P was there, editor of CEH and a colleague / mate from the US. We had a quick debrief about the journal and then I headed in to speak.
The paper I gave was on Chulalongkorn's visit to the Kaiser and how that fit into European imperial rivalries. To start with, however, I gave an overview of the broader project. Although there was a goodly number of people at the paper, what pleased me most was that the 'right ears' were in the room. Nineteenth and twentieth century specialists with a good understanding of the intellectual terrain I was moving across. The questions were to the point and knowledgeable. I was particularly pleased that my materialist subtext wasn't lost, with Anna R from Warwick picking up on this theme and getting me to expand it to some of my other case studies, in particular Morocco. Andrew P gave me the chance to talk about my evidence base as well. All in all it was highly productive session that has encouraged me to keep the ball rolling.
This for me is the value of conferences. Not self validation or a victory lap, but bringing new, scratchy work into a room and having it beaten into shape by other historians. I always try and present drafts at conferences, so I can get a sense of how other people see the work and so I can work further on new material. I also try and offer 'big target' papers. It's no use bringing a historical miniature derived from arcane knowledge only you know about to a conference, because it's impossible for others to enter into the discussion. You're unassailable, but at the expense of having locked everyone out. Broad and bold papers on fresh work always get a conversation started.
The feedback on the project was good, and that will help carry me through while I work further on it. Of course, no-one comes up afterwards and tells you that they think you're wasting your time. But the engagement was more than politeness obliged.
The good thing about presenting in the first session was that for the rest of the conference, you can relax and engage with the papers without overcooking your own paper while waiting. It also meant I could enjoy the conference dinner (I had 2 amazing Indian meals while in Leicester), chatting to British Germanists that I generally don't get a chance to speak to.
You'd think that this would encourage me to got the Historikertag, Germany's biennial monster history conference which is in Münster next week (or something). But I'm not. I'm going to write instead.
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