Academic Conferences As Neolibe - Donald J Nicolson

Academic Conferences as Neoliberal
Commodities
Donald J Nicolson
Academic
Conferences
as Neoliberal
Commodities
Donald J Nicolson
Freelance writer
Dundee, Scotland
ISBN 978-3-319-49189-9 ISBN 978-3-319-49190-5 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-49190-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016957750
The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

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I now know (from my boots up) why writers thank those who
live with and endure them. So to my darling wife Donatella
and mia suocera Liliana, I am eternally grateful for your
support, patience and encouragement during this project.
I hope this is the start of something new and exciting . . .
CONFERENCE REGISTRATION
Rather than using traditional headings, the book adopts the names of
events at conferences for each section. The Welcome does two things.
Firstly, it is analogous to a preface and represents a personal outline of how
I developed an interest in academic conferences. Secondly, it provides a
historical impression of academic conferences, and an overview of the
concept of conference. For the person who wants to suggest a quick
introduction to the world of the academic conference, this can be a one-
stop shop. The Opening Keynote introduces the conceptual framework,
which drives the work in the book, sets out its aims and explains the
methods used in the research reported.
The two parallel sessions report the empirical examples in this book.
Room numbers are used to subdivide these sessions, which represents how
conference presentations take place across different rooms in hotels or
universities. The rst plenary reports ve conference case studies, while the
second covers the different themes explored across the interviews.
The idea of non-sequentially numbering I take from David Winners
(2000) Brilliant Orange, which was inspired by the Dutch 1974 World
Cup squad numbering.
The Closing Keynote discusses the key ndings and limitations of the
research reported in this book, with a concluding note. The Conference
Abstract Book presents the abstracts for each section of this book.
Alas, this book has no conference freebies, be it a bag, pen or notepad
from the sponsor. (Disclaimer: this book had no sponsor, and ergo
I consider no conicts of interest). Nor is there a conference feedback
form to complete at the end of this book. But that is not to say that I am
vii
viii CONFERENCE REGISTRATION
not interested in your experience from reading this. I hope that some of
you will think afresh about academic conferences, and/or neoliberalism in
the academy. With a bit of luck some of the experiences that are reported
in these pages will chime with you. Maybe like me you feel there is a need
for better understanding of academic conferences. If so, I would love to
hear from you. I can be contacted on Twitter @the_mopster.
CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
Welcome 1
Opening Keynote 11
Travel and Conferences 12
The Delegate at the Conference 12
Neoliberalism and the Academy 14
Parallel Session One: Case Studies 21

Room 11: Case Study One 21
Room 15: Case Study Two 24
Room 6: Case Study Three 29
Room 4: Case Study Four 31
Room 8: Case Study Five 34
Parallel Session Two: Interviews 37

Room 7: Travel 37
The Opportunity to Travel: Conferences and Culture 40
Room 9: Communication 42
Presentation Style 43
Communication Content 45
Social Media 48
Room 10: Poster Presentations 49
Room 14: Professional Socialisation 51
ix
x CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
Room 5: The Delegate at the Conference 54

Room 13: The Impact of Conferences: Are They Useful or Not? 55
Closing Keynote 59
Conference Travel 59
The Delegate at the Conference 61
Conference as a Neoliberal Commodity 62
Reections 65
Conclusion 66
Conference Abstract Book 67

Welcome 67
Opening Keynote 67
Parallel Session One: Case Studies 68
Parallel Session Two: Interviews 68
Closing Keynote 68
Thank You Kindly 69
References 71
Index 77
Welcome
Abstract I have for long had a fascination with academic conferences,

having fondly documented each one that I attended. This session explains
my passion for conferences, and my particular method for documenting
them. It situates academic conferences within a historical context and
provides an overview of academic conferences. It then examines the con-
cept of the conference, including variants.
Keywords Historical overview Conferences Impact
The English comedian Alexi Sayle once said: Anyone who talks about a
workshop and isnt a mechanic is a total ******. I remember a Professor
displaying this on a slide at the rst academic conference I attended in
London in January 2002, which was incidentally labelled a Workshop.
I thought Sayles point was valid then, and I still do now.
The academic conference in London was a workshop run by NICE,
then the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, a UK-based orga-
nisation that produces evidence-based guidance for clinical and health-
care professionals. At this point, I was barely 2 months into my rst
research post. I worked at the time as a research assistant for a research
unit that was developing clinical guidelines on medical conditions, for
NICE; as well as providing advice on methodological issues, and
training and education support re the development of national clinical
guidelines. It was in this capacity that I went to London, as our unit
The Author(s) 2017 1

D.J. Nicolson, Academic Conferences as Neoliberal Commodities,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-49190-5_1
2 ACADEMIC CONFERENCES AS NEOLIBERAL COMMODITIES
was hosting a conference to provide support for NICE National

Collaborating Centres.
There were several things that left their mark on me from attending the
event, not least London itself, which I had never been to before and so I felt
like the clichd provincial boy in a big city. I think the workshop was held at
the lavish headquarters of the Royal College of Physicians in Regents Park,
but others and I cannot be certain because no records of the event remain.
I do however remember a Professor pointing out 221B Baker Street as we
hurriedly walked by it on the way to Kings Cross for our train, and so having
done some Sherlock-like deduction from looking at maps, concluded that
the nearby College was the venue. Then again I may be confusing this with a
similar London Workshop I attended in April (or was it May?) because at that
point I was not yet accustomed to making conference records. These records
have been invaluable to the development of this book.
It did not daunt me in 2003 when my line manager asked me to be
prepared to feedback to our research group about a conference our group
was attending. From my love of travel, I am a fervent note-maker, carrying a
travelogue to document where I have been. So it felt like second nature for
me to write about places and events I attended in a work capacity. Here was
born a habit that continued throughout my research career, where I would
write and disseminate my notes about the conferences that I attended. My
rst attempt at recording a conference was pretty basic. I had two categories:
Plenary session and Workshops. Under these, I had a bullet point for each
session tting each category. A solitary paragraph at the end offered my
opinions. This was by my later standards, a rather paltry conference record.
My recording of conferences began to expand with the rst interna-
tional conference I attended, in 2003. I not only had reports for each
session I attended, as well as my own presentation, but I reported on
networking, travel, accommodation, the city venue and its major tourist
sights. After that, I was a veritable one-man conference reporting industry.
I was hooked and although no-one ever again asked for me to record and
report on the conferences I went to (far less feedback on the conference
dinner a moot point for some colleagues), I still did and shared my
records with mainly unsuspecting colleagues. With each conference,
I added more information. I branched out into other academic events,
giving me my now modest records of not just conferences, but training
courses and seminars that I attended.
************
WELCOME 3
An overview of the academic conference in history will situate it in a

chronological context for the reader. Over the course of 2 years in the
mid-1960s, I consider two academic conferences in strikingly different
elds, which had a great impact on academic research that is still felt today
to varying degrees: The rst in 1964, the 18th World Medical Association
General Assembly was held in Helsinki. The conference sought to ensure
that the Holocaust atrocities of the Second World War that were carried out
under the guise of research would never be repeated. The conference
devised a Declaration of Ethical Principles to guide medical research invol-
ving human subjects; now the basis for the ethical treatment of human
subjects in medical research. For example, it stipulated that medical research
on human subjects should conform to accepted scientic principles (World
Medical Association 2001). In most countries, anyone who wants to con-
duct research on humans will have to complete applications for ethical and
governance approval, which is a result of the declaration that research
protocol must be submitted to the research ethics committee before a
study begins so that they can be considered, commented upon and given
guidance and approval (World Medical Association 2016).
The Declaration has since been revised by a variety of World Medical
Association General Assemblies: from the 29th Assembly in Tokyo, Japan,
in 1975, through the 35th Assembly in Venice, Italy, in 1983; the 41st
Assembly in Hong Kong in 1989; the 48th Assembly in the Republic of
South Africa in 1996; to the 52nd Assembly in Edinburgh, Scotland, in
2000. When the worth of attending research conferences was debated in
the British Medical Journal, Drife (2008) cited the Helsinki Conference
from 1964 for its subsequent impact.
The second conference held in 1966 at Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore was an international symposium entitled The Languages of
Criticism and the Sciences of Man, which was to have repercussions for
the social sciences. This conference is considered to be the academic event
that set the groundwork for the theory of Post-Structuralism and, in
particular, launched the career of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida.
His presentation Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human
Sciences, McCabe (2012) considers, was to have a profound effect across
the social sciences. Preceding this by 8 years was the groundbreaking 1958
Conference on Style at Indiana University, which represented an impor-
tant moment in the humanities, where there was a distinct shift towards
the scientic method becoming the accepted model of enquiry in the
social sciences.
These can be considered examples of conferences that have been able to

have a demonstrable impact. Half a century later, both the Helsinki and
Baltimore conferences are still remembered. In the case of the Helsinki
Conference, where the declaration has become the basis for ethics and
research governance in the research world, this has had a practical out-
come. For the Johns Hopkins conference, further developments have seen
the theories discussed at this conference usurped. However, the confer-
ence left its mark; for example, inspiring the 1986 Strathclyde University
conference on Linguistics of Writing, which was also inuenced by
the Indiana conference in its quest to replicate its importance and style
(Barry 2002).
There are many other notable conferences across history. One of the
most signicant was the Wansee Conference, which took place in the
Berlin suburb in January 1942, where the arrangements for the Final
Solution were laid out. The consequences of this underlined the 1964
Helsinki Conference. The Allies likewise held a signicant conference, in
February 1945 in Yalta, where the post-war division of Germany between
the United States, United Kingdom, France and USSR was agreed upon.
At the founding conference in Geneva in 1863, the International
Committee of the Red Cross made several great and momentous decisions
that were to have great impact. They decided that a red cross on a white
background would distinguish medical personnel on the battleeld
(Bewes 2013), and recommended that governments should support relief
committees, medical corps, ambulances and military hospitals (https://
www.icrc.org/accessed February 2016). One of the earliest conference in
modern times was run by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
(the Mormons), who have held an Annual General Conference since 1830
in Utah (https://www.lds.org/accessed February 2016). There is a
Conference Proceeding available online that purports to be from 1674,
La Fauconnerie du Roy avec la Conference des Fauconniers (https://
books.google.co.uk/books).
Precursors to academic Conferences can be traced back to symposia
held in Ancient Greece, where men would eat, drink and discuss philoso-
phy and politics (Department of Greek and Roman Art 2000). Coser
(1997) noted the role of the French Salons and English coffee houses in
the eighteenth century as places where the intellectuals of the day would
meet, talk, listen and discuss ideas. This tradition carried over into twen-
tieth-century Paris, with the likes of de Beauvoir, Sartre and Camus at
Les Deux Magots and Caf de Flore.
WELCOME 5
In the United Kingdom, during the months of September and

October, the main political parties hold party conferences. White
(2016) has noted how the Conservative Party rst held a conference
in 1867, while the Labour party held one for the rst time in 1903.
White has argued that many political conference presentations have had
major impact, shaping parties and politicians prospects. More so, it
has been noted that several politicians in the United Kingdom have
seen their political reputations made or lost at conferences (Anon
2016). This suggests that the conference is valuable for some politicians.
Furthermore, it might be that some conference presentations are mem-
orable to the general public, suggesting they might have made an impact.
It remains to be seen if this is the case for academics working in the social
sciences.
There is, in the twenty-rst century, a variant on the academic con-
ference that is accessible to the general public; the TED (Technology,
Entertainment, Design) conference and associated online recorded
conference presentations, known as TED Talks, which are available on
YouTube. These are short 1020 min presentations by speakers from a
range of different elds, including science, research and the humanities.
They are probably the closest the general public will come to seeing
an academic presentation, although almost 80 % of presentations
are actually done by non-academics (Sugimoto et al. 2013). TED
presentations do not however help an academic to advance in their
career. Sugimoto et al. (2013) found doing a TED presentation had
no impact on citations of their work, suggesting TED popularises
research, but does not help promote the work of those who conducted
the research.
************
Academic conventions dictate the need for clarity on the object of

examination. The New Oxford Dictionary of English denes a confer-
ence as a formal meeting which typically takes place over several days
and involves people with a shared interest, especially one held regularly
by an association or organisation (Pearsall and Hanks 1998, pp. 385).
This is a useful starting point, although it fails to mention the purpose of
the meeting. Gross and Fleming (2011) noted that a key function of an
academic conference was intellectual communication to enable people to
present and discuss ndings from research. Therefore, taken together,
we can then say that a conference is a formal meeting based on intellec-

tual communication.
It is not easy to explain what an academic conference involves. For
example, some conferences that I attended were called workshops and
others meetings. To add to confusion, some conferences involved smal-
ler teaching events labelled workshops. Mair (2013) has similarly recog-
nised the difculty in dening a conference, noting that the denitional
problems in the conference and convention context are related to the size
of meetings, their duration and the origin of attendees for international
events. Conferences within the social sciences tend to be based in a
particular discipline, and furthermore focused on a specic sub-theme.
For example, the British Sociological Association Medical Sociology
Group Annual Conference is based in sociology with a focus on the
particular eld of medical sociology.
Conference presentations usually take one of two forms: an oral talk
(normally with PowerPoint slides), or a poster. Presenting a poster at a
conference requires a great amount of preparation in advance. Ilic and
Rowe (2013) has noted that producing a poster to present at a conference
is a costly endeavour, in terms of the time required to produce and publish
it; and in addition the travel expenses required to present it at venues.
Rowe and Ilic (2015) have suggested that a posters value is diminished by
its inability to effectively disseminate information and facilitate network-
ing. There is, for Rowe (2012), a degree of loneliness to be felt by the
poster presenter because of a lack of effective participant interaction,
limiting knowledge transfer and utilisation.
Parallel sessions are valuable because they provide attendees the chance
to choose between presentations. By picking what sessions to watch
(or not), the delegate might be said to be constructing their own con-
ference; that is, making an experience that is unique to him or her. The
implications of this are that a conference can probably never be the same
event for two people. Parallel sessions also provide the opportunity for
the delegate viewing the conference to take a much needed respite from
the conference itself. That this is needed is because Bell and King (2010)
have written about the need for endurance during a conference, refer-
ring to being able to endure discomfort or suffering caused by hunger,
fatigue or alcohol.
Having an abstract proposal accepted by a conference is a notable
achievement. The academic will make an application to their university
for funding to attend the conference, travel costs and accommodation.
WELCOME 7
If the conference is overseas, the application process can be demanding.

Universities do not usually approve a funding application if the person is
not presenting; unless they are a senior gure. There will be an expectation
that the person will at the very least present at the conference. Universities
will often expect the person to attend a specic conference workshop
(better still plural), to learn new ways of doing research.
Parker and Weik (2014) have noted that academics that get to present
at conferences do so on the condition of being funded by their employers.
Often when applying for grants to conduct research, people will stipulate
that they seek X amount for the purpose of travelling to and presenting at
Y conference. A consequence of this is that as Parker and Weik (2014)
have suggested, because Universities are willing to pay employees to
attend conferences, this leads to conferences growing in size but becom-
ing a less sociable place to hold discussions.
************
I have a fascination for writing about conferences. However, I am (of course)

not the rst writer to have done so. David Lodge, the author and former
Professor of English Literature at the University of Birmingham has com-
mentated on and written about academic conferences; see, for example, his
1984 novel Small World, or his television documentary about a humanities
conference (Big Words, Small Worlds). More recently Elif Batumans
(2010) The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who
Read Them touched on her attending conferences as part of a travelogue of
her research into Russian literature.
I attended a range of different conferences, which reected the aca-
demic area that I worked in, Health Services Research. The best denition
I can think of for Health Services Research is by Stephens et al. (2011)
who say it is the multidisciplinary scientic study of social variables,
nance, organizational structures and processes, health technologies and
personal behaviours which impact on access to health care, its quality and
cost, and ultimately, our health and well-being. This broad range therefore
enabled me to attend a wide variety of conferences and meet a range of
academics from a number of disciplines. I myself considered my back-
ground was the social sciences, which is just as broad a church as Health
Services Research.
Parker and Weik (2014) have acknowledged the good fortune aca-
demics from Universities in the northern hemisphere enjoy, having
generous travel budgets, and a mobility that, unlike that of the refugee, is
chosen and socially valued. I was lucky to be such an academic traveller;
attending and presenting at more than 20 conferences. This included six
international conferences, although two of them were on UK home soil,
and so because they did not require overseas travel for me, I did not
consider them international.
Parker and Weik (2014) proposed different reasons for why academics
go to conferences, from having a secret affair,1 to seeking feedback on
their presentation, hearing about a new research nding which stimulates
thought and inspired new ideas, networking and making connections with
others working in similar areas, or adding to their CVs. Like many others
have done; I took every opportunity I could to legitimately mix business
with pleasure; taking annual leave before or after the conference. I did so
on occasions, to travel and see places that might otherwise have remained
unvisited by me. I have since returned to some of these places in my own
time. Because the return airfare was legitimately paid to take me to and
from the conference that I was working at, I only had to nd my own
accommodation outwith the conference. My work enabled me to literally
circumnavigate the earth and present on three continents. To quote Cole
Porter, nice work if you can get it . . .
The initial driver for my examination of conferences was my reecting
on the general usefulness of conferences. My reasoning was that I had
probably viewed over 200 presentations that gathered varying audiences
and often generated indifferent replies (if any at all) including my own.
This made me speculate that conferences merely generate noise, and if
they do, I wondered what the purpose and value of attending a conference
might be for academics.
This study is an exploratory examination of academic conferences
based around the social sciences. (It should be noted that the term
academic conference is considered interchangeable with research con-
ference.) The investigation is framed around the conference and neoli-
beralism, conference travel and the delegate at the conference. The
reason for this is explained in the following Opening Keynote, where
I present a formal background to the concepts on which the study rests.
These concepts have been derived from an engagement with previous
work on conferences, which enabled the development of the theoretical
framework on which to hang the ndings in this book. Lastly, it explains
the methods that were used in conducting the research underpinning
this book.
WELCOME 9
NOTE
1. Conferences are social events, where academics interact with one another not
only when presenting, but also before, during and after the conference. The
conference hook-up is the politest way I have found to refer to sex at an
academic conference. It was not an agenda item in any of my interviews,
although I was prepared to run with it if anyone raised it. No one did. That
may reect the sample of interviewees, or my not chasing a story on the subject.
Opening Keynote
Abstract This session constructs a framework for exploring academic

conferences in the social sciences in relation to travel, the delegate at the
conference (including aspects of communication and socialisation), and
neoliberalism. It then goes on to explain the aim and objectives of this
book, the methodology and methods.
Keywords: Travel Socialisation Communication Neoliberalism

Paradigm Luxury scholarly product
Henderson (2015) proposed that conferences are of relevant interest to

academics, but there appears to have been little empirical examination of
conference in the social sciences. The work presented in this book
represents a rst step to empirically understand the impact of confer-
ence. The review of previous work has not been helped by the literature
having not been adequately sign-posted for search strategies. The inter-
rogation of the literature has unveiled the following three themes that
characterise what has previously been written about academic confer-
ences. This is drawn from theoretical work, empirical research and
commentary. These provide the framework for the analysis and discus-
sion of the ndings in this book.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-49190-5_2
TRAVEL AND CONFERENCES

Conferences are, for the majority of attendees, most often held somewhere
other than where they live and work. Thus, an essential aspect of attending
a conference will be the travel required to get to the venue. For overseas
conferences, this will require a ight. The concerns about carbon emis-
sions from airplane travel were brought up in discussion of travel to
conferences in the early years of the new millennium. For example,
Godlee (2005) wrote about the dangers of conference travel on climate
change, as well as potential terrorist threats to travel. The implication was
that because long-haul travel to conferences had deleterious environmen-
tal effects, this might be a barrier to attending conferences if it dissuades
some people from travel.
Parker and Weik (2014) proposed further barriers to conference travel
include funding, geographical location and language issues. A popular
suggestion in the noughties was that teleconferencing could reduce the
need for conference travel (see Greenhalgh 2007). It was hoped that this
would remove the need for travel and considerably lessen the cost of
attending a conference.
THE DELEGATE AT THE CONFERENCE

The delegate at the conference is not a passive actor. Most will interact,
whether by presenting their work, or by meeting and talking with peers.
Therefore, communication and socialisation are important aspects of the
conference. A helpful way to understand the importance of communication
is the conduit model (Shannon and Weaver 1949), which proposes the
differentiation of communication between that which has a clear message,
a signal; and that which does not, and is considered noise. Based on this
distinction, it might be said that some presentations generate noise. Parker
and Weik (2014) argued that the presentations academics give at confer-
ences are short, bland and a long way from ground-breaking (which is so that
they can be easily digested by the audience), albeit with few exceptions. Such
immaterial presentations might then be said to represent noise, because they
do not offer a signicant message (signal).
Bell and King (2010) have explained how style is important when
presenting at conferences, and can afrm or undermine the presentation.
They propose that the academic requires a high level of stage-craft to
convince the audience that they incorporate and embody the values of the
OPENING KEYNOTE 13
academic culture; and so it is argued that the presenters manner can be an

indicator of how they will interact with the audience. This highlights the
difference between the presentation style, and information content; which
is an important distinction for interpreting the ndings.
Conferences afford the academic the opportunity to socialise by having
the opportunity to meet colleagues in a shared space. They are also a space
where academic socialisation occurs; enabling experience and knowledge,
and in particular the norms and values of Academia to be passed on from
expert to novice; see, for example, Bell and King (2010). Gross and
Fleming (2011) added to this, arguing that a key function of a conference
was to serve as a means for professional socialisation, for those in their
early-career stage to become integrated into their eld of endeavour.
However, the process of socialisation is not relevant solely to those who
are new to their discipline. For example, Hickson (2006) suggested that
some seasoned academics attend conferences for the purpose of remaining
a professional in their eld.
For Lindley (2009) there is the process of the academic being socialised
not just at a conference, but socialised in relation to attending the confer-
ences, again by observing how those with more experience act. However,
Lindley has similarly noted that the unwritten rules of conference partici-
pation are difcult to identify (Lindley 2009, p. 423). Socialisation is
therefore crucial to interacting at a conference, but it might in itself not
be enough.
The experience/welfare of the delegate at the conference has received
modest attention. Ford and Harding (2008) conducted a reexive ethno-
graphic study of a conference for managers. They proposed that confer-
ences were a means for controlling academics by having a subordinating
effect, whereby they are expected to keep to the conference timetable and
be herded from one room to another. An issue they noted was, how as two
female academics, they felt that they went unrecognised, being lost in the
mass, and objectied as conference attendees. Parker and Weik (2014)
have suggested that conferences have a homogenising effect through the
intellectual environment. They consider labelling conferences as interna-
tional, global and world is wrong because no matter where they
are held, they largely celebrate one single academic culture; the
Anglo-American one and have the standard expectation of English being
the conference language.
Bell and King (2010) have considered the welfare of the conference
attendee, and likened presenting at a conference to an endurance test.
They recounted the experience of an attendee at a conference who felt

tired from travelling and presenting, how this inuenced her being, her
feeling indigestion from lunch, her dull headache from too much coffee
and drinking too little water. The attendee spoke about just wanting to get
some sleep, and wondering if this was what being an academic meant.
The conference experience can also be positive for the attendee. For
example, Parker and Weik (2014) have proposed that conferences can
present an opportunity for attendees to escape from the responsibilities of
domestic life. However, they have noted that because the majority
of caregiving in the family home is still undertaken by women, it is more
of a barrier for women attending conferences than men. Their conclusion
was that the gender politics of academia requires that the conference
delegate is able to be detached from their home so as to be able to perform
at a high level.
NEOLIBERALISM AND THE ACADEMY

This book looks at the neoliberal agenda in relation to academic confer-
ences. This ts into the large and growing literature examining the impact
of the neoliberal doctrine across all spheres of public life, including politics
(Giroux 2015), the economy (Altvater 2009) and education (Davies and
Bansel 2007). Springer (2012) has noted the neoliberal zeitgeist has
covered a vast range of subjects, including citizenship, sexuality and sub-
jectivity. This wide reach highlights its academic avour of the month
status, but also indicates a problem when trying to pin down what is meant
by Neoliberalism.
Clarifying the concept of neoliberalism is not an easy task. For example,
Ferguson (2010) has noted that the concept of neoliberalism is often
wrongly used as a synonym for capitalism, or even the inequalities of the
economy at large (when it is not). Bell and Green (2016), referring to
Latour, (2005), have noted how scholars mistakenly use the concept of
neoliberalism to draw connections between unrelated events in life that
might reveal a clandestine power pulling the strings.
For De Lissovoy (2014), austerity is a necessary requirement in the
neoliberalisation of society whereby the rationality of markets, entrepre-
neurialism and competition is considered the proper and only way to
structure public policy and public life. Anticipating these points, Fish
(2009) suggested that neoliberalism can be seen as derogatory when
referring to economic/political policy.
OPENING KEYNOTE 15
Hibou (2015) proposed the concept of neoliberal bureaucratisation

to explain how aspects of life follow from a process of rationalisation and
professionalisation, and a quest for neutrality, objectivity and imperson-
ality. The confusion surrounding the denition is not helpful, but an
insightful explanation is drawn from Barnett (2005) who argued that
neoliberalism represents a discreet alteration of the class-driven reform of
the state to benet the free markets. Therefore, neoliberalism is a form of
policies and governance that support privatisation, the free market
and increased competition. This indicates that neoliberalism has an ideo-
logical basis.
As more writers focus their attention on neoliberalism and the academy,
the likes of Gill (2010) has proposed that the academy has mastered
neoliberalisation of the workplace through its self-monitoring, exibility
and creativity. Perica (2016) has said that neoliberalisation has put the
existence of the academy at risk. Olssen and Peters (2005) have noted how
the neoliberalisation of the university has resulted in change whereby in
place of the traditional professional culture of open intellectual enquiry
and debate there is now an institutional stress on performance through the
following measures: strategic planning, performance indicators, quality
assurance measures and academic audits. These are all actions, which can
be costed, but for some it might be considered anathema to put a price on
a debate or enquiry.
Lorenz (2012) has argued that the introduction of neoliberal policies in
the public sector, the New Public Management (NPM), reects the free
market rhetoric in combination with intensive university managerial con-
trol. The notion of the NPM is a common theme in the literature and was
said to reveal a shift in the goals of Universities from ones reecting
academic objectives, to that of nancial management (Radice 2013).
The NPM is a crucial element because as Hibou (2015) has argued, it
feeds off neoliberal bureaucratisation.
Davies and Bansel (2007) noted that neoliberal practice seems to
revolve around measurement, and so quality and auditing become the
prime objectives in academia. An example here might be the university
league tables that are published each year, showing where a university is
ranked nationally and internationally. Radice (2013) has similarly written
about the importance of measures of success in research, which include
publications and grant funding obtained. This leads to academics compet-
ing against one another for resources. It is therefore far from controversial
to suggest that neoliberal ideology is taking a grip on higher education
and research. Nevertheless, it is not so clear if and how the neoliberal

agenda operates on conferences. This is a key driver for looking at this.
De Lissovoy (2014) has proposed that Universities are increasingly
becoming assembly lines for commodiable research. Gupta et al.
(2016) have added how as the output of university knowledge is commo-
died, there are activities that are deemed useless because they do not
overlap with the interests of capitalist production. The implication is that
the humanities are now considered such an expense to the Neoliberal
University because of their uselessness in generating income. As
Bembi (2016) noted; the humanities in particular, are deemed to be
useless for two reasons in the modern university. Firstly, the production
of theory is deemed to not have an economic value. Secondly there is the
perceived uselessness of the humanities discipline in itself, for the same
reasons, which gives it an appearance of being in a position of luxury. That
the humanities might be able to help our understanding of life and its
inherent problems indicates how the assumptions of it being useless are
not helpful.
In addition, Bembi (2016) has proposed that scholarly production can
be conceived as a large component made up of the natural and social
sciences which have value as a commodity for capital; and a smaller
component that reects luxury scholarly production, providing ideolo-
gical meaning to a commodied universe, which does not have value as a
commodity for capital. At its simplest a commodity can be considered
something of use/value, which can be bought and sold.
Morgan (2016) has noted how the Neoliberal University utilises casual
labour, that is, academics on short-term contracts rather than tenure, and
so makes the pursuit of a research career, good pay and job security
increasingly difcult. The neoliberal academy, therefore, is perceived to
have a role in income generation, through its research and educational
output. But, as was noted, this economic role is one that is not possible for
all parts of the humanities and social sciences, which can make them
appear futile to capital, or even privileged because they are unburdened
with having to be useful (Bembi 2016, p. 430).
Some works on conferences have touched on aspects of neoliberalism,
albeit implicitly. Hickson (2006) and Lindley (2009) have both argued
that the exhibition section of a convention offers a space, in particular a
marketplace for people to sell their product or service. This example is
perhaps concrete, but it is important because it hints at the importance of
the idea of a transaction taking place. Goods are bought and sold in the
OPENING KEYNOTE 17
academic market, and certainly at a conference. These goods, which can

include teaching and research, are expected to have utility; that is, to be
useful and of value to the buyer.
Others agree that conferences can be useful events for academics to
attend. Elton (1983) has proposed that on the surface conferences are
places of potential learning. One mechanism for this might be how they
provide a place to observe notable scholars debate with authority about
topics important to their eld of research (Hickson 2006). Drife (2008)
has argued that conferences worth is that they bring together and motivate
like-minded people; suggesting the Helsinki Conference would not have
been the same had it been conducted as a group email. Hickson (2006)
thinks that viewing others presentations at conferences can have a con-
tagion effect, making the delegate feel excited and enthused about
research, triggering new ideas and encouraging meaningful thinking.
These points suggest that conferences do have value.
It can follow that the value of attending conferences is important to
ascertain when the costs for attending are high. For example, Hickson
(2006) asked why academics should bother attending research confer-
ences, when it costs so much in time and money to attend. In spite of
the time, effort and money required by academics to organise, attend and
present at national and international research conferences; Ioannidis
(2012) noted there was no empirical evidence of the utility of conferences.
For these reasons, this book looks at the impact/usefulness of conferences.
To consider such a point important might indicate how the neoliberal
agenda can be unquestioningly applied to conferences.
One can also see that neoliberalism can be facilitated by a paradigm.
In particular, a conference might be considered to be useful when it
legitimates a new paradigm. Thomas Kuhn (2012) sought to explain
how developments in science arise by means of the Paradigm; a concept
which despite being a much misused expression in common dialect, has
been equally contested. The concept of Paradigm remains a popular
discussion point amongst students and academics alike in print and at
conferences, as will be revealed by the ndings of this research.
The social sciences for a long period had two diametrically opposed
ways of doing research; two mono-methods focusing on qualitative, or
quantitative data alone. Those who wanted to combine both in one study
were discouraged from doing so, usually on philosophical grounds by the
argument of the problem of incommensurability, where quantitative
and qualitative methods were seen as being incompatible (Mass 2000).
This managed to not only dissuade researchers from mixing methods, but
kept the two camps opposed for decades, a period referred to as The
Paradigm War, where each considered itself the true way of doing social
science research.
Gross and Fleming (2011) suggested a key function of academic con-
ferences was to legitimate new paradigms; for example, reinforcing new
ideas and directions in research. Consequently, a conference can be a place
that has an impact on what research is and what it is not, and how it is
carried out. Conferences then become useful when they help to drive a
discipline in a particular direction.
In conclusion, it is worthwhile to indicate to the reader my interpreta-
tion of the neoliberal agenda in academia and in relation to conferences,
because this is the lens through which this book views conferences. I am
not optimistic about the neoliberal academy. While some may see the
opportunity for academia to open up and be more like a business (if it
isnt already), and welcome this change; I see the dangers of academics
being exploited as commodities and academia shifting from its intellectual
traditions.
************
The aim of this book is to explore academic conferences. It is primarily

framed around conferences and neoliberalism, but also looks at conference
travel, and the delegate at the conference. The broad objectives to achieve
this aim are:
1. To conduct an analysis of a set of conference case studies, to under-

stand what conferences tell us about the neoliberal agenda.
2. To examine the issues of travel, and the delegate at the conference,
covering communication, socialisation, experience and welfare.
Adopting a mixed methods design, this study is comprised of a retro-

spective analysis of a set of case studies, and a series of interviews. The case
study analyses are of a set of conferences that I attended between 2003 and
2013; and an analysis of a conference from 1986, based on the edited
highlights available online (http://keywords.pitt.edu/videos/video_6.
html)
An assortment of methods was used for data collection: notes I made in
real time (for overseas conferences only); conference records I produced
OPENING KEYNOTE 19
and disseminated to colleagues; presenters publications arising from con-

ference presentations; conference abstract books (where available); con-
ference presentation slides; and participant written responses in a bespoke
questionnaire.
The conferences in the case studies have been anonymised for ethical
reasons. The Chatham House Rule has been observed, and so the identity of
neither speakers nor conferences are disclosed. There is also a practical
reason for this decision, because the focus is not directly on the conferences
or what they discussed/debated, but rather on revealing what made them
important in relation to the framework. The debates and presentations are
therefore reported in an abstract way, reecting guidance from the
International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (1997), who have
suggested that identifying details can be ignored when they are not essential.
Interviews with people who attended conferences that I attended were
used as a means to corroborate my initial notes and records. Sampling was
purposive, informed by sifting the conference records to identify presenta-
tions and discussions at conferences that I considered important. I used
my judgement of the research area to identify presentations or debates that
had at the time or have since had an impact on their eld. Although I had
permission to name the interlocutors in Plenary Session One, I have
decided to keep them anonymised, so as not to break from the anonymity
of the conferences in this Session.
The interviews were conducted with people from a range of back-
grounds: academics from the social sciences, including methodology,
statistics, epidemiology and literary studies; people from journalism,
from medicine, members of the lay public, and people who have written
about conferences. When respondents were unable to be interviewed,
I sent them an email with questions. I approached 47 people. In total
33 (70 %) agreed to be interviewed or sent back information by email;
9 (27 %) were female, and 11 (33 %) had presented at the same conference
that I attended. The interviews were usually 30 min in length, and most
often conducted by Skype.
I relayed the purpose of the interview to the participants, to understand
views about research conferences. I explained to each person that I was
running the interviews in the capacity of a freelance writer and former
academic, independent of any university or funding body. I did not
record any interview, but rather made shorthand notes. Each interview
was guided by an interview guide, tailored to the presentation that
we were taking about. There was some overlap in that I asked most
participants the following questions: (1) In general, why do you go

to conferences? and (2) In general, what makes a conference valuable
for you?
I made detailed notes during and after the interview, capturing verba-
tim responses that I considered important to the story. A copy of the
interview notes was shared with respondents after their interview, afford-
ing the opportunity to check for accuracy and change if need be. Several
were content with this. Some requested that they saw the actual passages
relating to them in the book. I then asked for their permission to use the
material from their interviews in the book, and asked if they were happy to
be named. While I have maintained the anonymity of the conferences in
Session Two, I have not anonymised the participants, so that readers know
who said what about conferences, so that they could have a context, other
than the title/profession of the interlocutor. The passages from the inter-
views in quotations are verbatim.
Parallel Session One: Case Studies
Abstract This session highlights how a conference that has a memorable

presentation or stages an important debate/discussion, goes beyond pro-
ducing mere noise and has impact. This gives it a value. By promoting an
ideology/research tool/novel method, a conference becomes a market-
place. These aspects of a conference bet the neoliberal tradition.
Keywords Ideology Utility Conicts of interests Commodity

Academic identity Marketplace
This session reports an analysis of a set of ve conference case studies. The

purpose of doing so is not to recount to the reader each conference in
detail, but rather to provide examples that can shed light, specically on
the relationship between research conferences and the neoliberal agenda.
ROOM 11: CASE STUDY ONE

In 1986, a conference was held in the United Kingdom that sought to
bring together academics from the Humanities and the social sciences.
This conference was also recorded for a documentary that was aired the
following year on terrestrial television in the United Kingdom. Speaking
on the television programme, a Professor of Drama who attended the
conference felt that the separation between the two disciplines was not
helpful. Before the conference he had predicted that people would talk

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-49190-5_3
over one another; suggesting that debates are more useful when they
occur in print rather than face-to-face. The short documentary showed
nothing to dispel this prediction.
The programme portrayed the conference as an attempt at enabling
two different disciplines to have an intellectual debate, during a highly
charged period in UK politics when the Thatcher Government was in
power; yet this was something that was not touched on at the conference,
in a large part because speakers from the left by-and-large did not attend.
(This was a point picked up on the TV programme.) The lack of balance of
people from different politico-theoretical persuasions thus diminished the
chance for debate.
The upshot of this conference was that by being recorded it became the
subject of its own analysis through the TV programme. The documentary
featured clips interspersed with talking heads; that is, stakeholders and
others passing comment on the conference, although several of them had
not attended the conference at the time. In the closing segments, there
were some interesting nal comments: One commentator explained how
she felt that people get fed up at conferences with the ritualistic way in
which they are structured, meaning that people speak and others ask them
questions. Another commentator made a more general point that confer-
ences involve people talking fast and not listening to the other or to
themselves.
There was a great deal of criticism from the audience as to how the
conference was run, and the dislike of the presence of the television
cameras. One of the criticisms made, by a student at the time, was that
the conference was Eurocentric, and so had not made any advance since
conferences of the 1950s.
During the closing keynote by a Professor of English, there was a note
passed from the audience requesting the continuation of a previous dis-
cussion. In the later televised programme, it was suggested that this
confrontation highlighted how the issues that had been discussed in an
abstract way at the conference had become very real in that moment. For
example, a Professor of the Humanities had presented a proposal for
substituting the concepts of openness, exibility, indeterminacy, gen-
erosity of mind, and the acknowledgement of difference, with the
notion of persuasion, that is, a desire for mastery and closure. He felt
that this could not be escaped in real life. The presenter of the programme
suggested that the Professor of Humanities was implying how rhetoric
does not compromise reality but constitutes it. The conference had, as
PARALLEL SESSION ONE: CASE STUDIES 23
captured on lm, highlighted academics quest at a conference to master

others in their communications and bring closure to debates. This is a
point that could probably be made of many conferences.
When I spoke in 2015 with a Professor of Linguistics who attended the
conference, he told me that he felt the TV programme had spun the
conference in a particular way to shape its drama in a particular direction,
though the programme was also constructed to fragment a unitary point
of view, which to some extent it succeeded in. However, the conference
failed in being the change that it sought to be. He told me:
It was set up to make a transformation to the eld; but did not. It was
thought that the interdisciplinary nature of this conference might have made
it useful, but it wasnt.
The conference enabled the hosts to talk about a literary course they ran,
highlighting an important function of conferences before the advent of the
Internet: to disseminate important material to a large audience in an
efcient manner.
In the television programme, a then PhD student (mentioning Freuds
patient the Wolf Man which was a reference to a talk a Professor of the
Humanities gave at the conference where he cited this) said about the
conference:
The papers were commodities and if the hall itself was commodious, then
we felt rather like . . . we were playing a commode to the speakers on the
platform. I think thats something that we objected to. I think we like the
Wolf Man we felt that we were being shat on from a great height. (Quote
verbatim from recording available at http://keywords.pitt.edu/videos/
video_6.html, accessed January 2016.)
By comparison, when I spoke with a Professor of the Humanities, he said

that he thought that the conference was a particularly dramatic one. He
did however also consider the conference was a bit self-important, with the
pomposity built in because it was an All Star event. A guest speaker at the
conference was a famous French philosopher who did not give a talk, but
instead answered questions, which had been submitted to him in advance.
The Professor told me how he felt that the big name speakers had come to
be publically displayed and publically adored, giving the example of a
woman who queried if the famous French philosophers talk alluded to the
persecution of Christ, to which the philosopher held out his hands as if he

was being crucied.
Gupta et al. (2016) spoke of the perceived importance of utility in
academic production. A case could be made that this conference repre-
sented an academia that has largely been consigned to history that which
does not necessarily have utility for the wider environment. This conclu-
sion might be given weight because a Professor of the Humanities told me
how he considers that neoliberalism monetarises everything, and thinks
the neoliberal agenda reduced interest in speculative areas, especially
philosophy and literature. What is more revealing is that in 1987 the
Professor of Linguistics felt academia was changing from being a church
to resembling a shopping mall with commodities to sell; that is, what the
academic presenters said in their talks. This was a prescient point in
relation to the neoliberalism of the academy.
ROOM 15: CASE STUDY TWO

In 2003, I attended an international conference run by an Association
with a focus on a particular research method, often used in medicine and
health research. The Association is a proponent of evidence-based prac-
tice, which has been dened as the conscientious, explicit, and judicious
use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of indivi-
dual patients (Sackett et al. 1996).
The conference, held in Spain, ran for 1 week with a programme of
events comprised of the reception and opening address; four plenary
sessions; six parallel sessions; three workshop sessions; four poster sessions;
a reception; an ofcial ceremony; a sports tournament; and a farewell
party. A specic focus of the week was a discussion on conicts of interests
in relation to the funding of research carried out in the name of the
Association.
A conict of interest can occur in any realm of life, where the involve-
ment of one actor jeopardises the integrity of what another is doing. This
can be a common problem in research when, for example, a pharmaceu-
tical company funds researchers to examine how well its new drug works
compared with a drug already available on the market. The charge is that
because the company wants its new drug to work better than another
does, it may have a surreptitious (or even more explicit) effect on how the
research was carried out, leading to a biased outcome in favour of their
drug. A second form of conict of interests is where a research sponsor has
failed to report the ndings of a study because it showed no benet for

their product. A common example is where pharmaceutical companies
trials have gone unpublished, when the new drug was found not to have a
benecial outcome.
In the years leading up to the debate at the conference, concerns had
been raised. For example, Boyd and Bero (2000) found an increasing
number of researchers in the United States reported receiving industry
funding, and so they concluded that guidance would be necessary to
clarify what would be a conict of interest, and how it should be handled.
However, Rodwin (1993) noted that the medical profession had been
slow to recognise conicts of interest compared with other professions.
A physician and medical researcher, who cofounded the Association,
told me how he had fought for many years to get industry money out of
Association, long before the 2003 debate. Therefore, the groundwork for
this debate had been ongoing for several years. At a previous Association
conference, some attendees had tried to raise the problem of conicts of
interests, but this was not generated into the decisive debate until the
2003 conference. In 2001, an attendee stated her intention to prepare a
document on types of conicts of interest. The issue was to be a recurring
theme in the run-up to the 2003 conference. For example, an Association
meeting in 2002 agreed that the then policy that Association research
must not be funded solely from a single source with a vested interest in the
review should be restated.
At a workshop in September 2002, a working group proposed to the
Association that industry funding for a review was unacceptable, whether
or not there were additional funders of the review. Of 53 people who
responded to this proposal, over half (33) agreed in principle with this
statement, although a physician and medical researcher considered this
might have been underestimated due to the manner in which some people
replied. Nielson (2005) noted that some afliates wrote a letter stating the
need for reassurance that Association research was not inuenced by
commercial funding that would enable either individuals or groups work-
ing on the review gain nancially from review outcomes.
The conference had a session devoted to debating the issue of conicts
of interest, and how the Association should respond to them. There were
four presenters: a senior researcher who was to later work on the
International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, and a physician
and senior researcher who cofounded the Association, spoke about the
dangers of the close proximity of the Association to pharmaceutical
companies through funding. A representative of a pharmaceutical com-

pany and a Director of an Institute for Pharmacological Research pre-
sented the benets of industry and the Association having a friendly and
open relationship.
The discussions on conicts of interest were not conned to the plenary
session. A poster reported a review they had conducted to examine per-
ceptions of nancial conicts of interest in scientic research. While a
spoken presentation examined the archive records of seven universities in
the United States to see how the institutions implemented policies to
identify and manage conicts of interests. The debate arose again at the
Annual General Meeting.
An Association subgroup met three times during the week-long con-
ference. The rst meeting allowed the group to familiarise themselves with
the issues, whereas the second enabled the group to discuss feedback from
delegates, as well as the Plenary Session. The second meeting reafrmed
the stance that no review should receive funding from a single source with
vested interests. The following day at the extraordinary meeting, it was
decided that the issue should not be rushed, and so there would be wider
consultation across the Association membership as a whole.
It is not just about the industry having close ties with researchers.
Conferences can be a means for marketing drugs or devices. Several people
spoke about the links between industry and conferences. Some thought
that conferences, and in particular conference materials, can act as market-
ing stories for the industry, by which they were referring to pharmaceutical
companies, especially if a presentation was comparing the effectiveness of
two or more drugs. A Professor of Medicine told me how he considered:
Some conferences create rules on what is considered important to dissemi-

nate, and that powerful experts magnify their message. Many conferences
build on narratives around the usefulness of drugs, etc. for incorporation
into practice and are a link in the chain between evidence and the market of a
product.
A consultation exercise was conducted after the conference among mem-

bers. The Association group meeting considered the replies at a meeting
in 2004. While there were no rm conclusions, a policy document was
drawn up. The debate was carried forward to the conference the following
year in Canada, where there was support for commercial funding for
translation of reviews. Two options were then proposed: to prohibit
industry directly funding Association research, or to permit commercial

funding of non-review activities, safeguarded by a rewall so the money
would not pass directly from Industry to an individual or an Association
research group. The second option won the vote.
Two days later at the open session of the AGM, the Association
noted that it was to discourage commercial funding because of fears
of harming the reputation of the Association. A motion was then carried
to reconsider the issue of industry funding.
At an Association meeting in 2005, a template declaration of conicts
of interest was drafted. Furthermore, there was now a recommendation that
direct industry funding could continue (although for non-review work, for
example translation; this could be phased out over 5 years. There was a
suggestion that a balance be sought, with a list of acceptable commercial
funders.
The Association drew up a policy on Conicts of Interests not long
after 2005. Today (in 2016) the Association policy on conicts of interest
states that groups must be free from perceived bias by the receipt of cash or
another benet from a group or person perceived to have an outcome in
the review; for example, commercial sponsorship from a pharmaceutical
company. The research therefore cannot be associated with a commercial
sponsorship conict of interest.
A physician and senior researcher who cofounded the Association said
that he feels things have improved but not enough 10 years after the
conicts of interest policy was developed:
Many leading doctors are used to taking industry money . . . Currently, it is

allowed that up to half of authors of Association research can have nancial
COIs in relation to the company whose product they are reviewing . . . I
believe this policy is wrong. No one with such nancial COIs should be
allowed to be an author on Association research . . . the current policy, I nd
embarrassing for our organisation.
Many debates at conferences tend to be theoretical in their scope, discuss-

ing a concept at an abstract level. The COI debate was the antithesis,
having potentially serious actual ramications for the Association. For
example, one of the concerns before the debate was that some
Association research groups might go out of business through losing
funding from pharmaceutical companies.
The notion of the Association being seen as a reliable source of infor-

mation about health and health care was imperative to the debate. The
year after the conicts debate, at another Association meeting, I sat in on a
workshop called Encouraging Collaboration. This small group discus-
sion focused on the crisis of lack of funding in the Association and various
Association entities. The view of this session was that the funding crisis was
a test of the values of the Association. I was told a striking and yet simple
way to consider the importance of values and the risk to the perceived trust
in the Association. The rst was that the integrity of Association would be
rocked if it ever produced a review where the decimal point was in the
wrong place; that is, if it ever reported a study where the effect size or
probability was incorrect. This would immediately cast doubt on the
evidence it produced under its name. The second risk, pertinent to the
Conicts debate, was the risk to the reputation of Association if it was to
again accept industry funding.
A journalist told me how there has not been enough genuine debate
about medicine and industry closeness, and how to clean it up. For him,
conicts of interest entail direct-to-consumer medicine advertising, fund-
ing, guideline development, and so on, so conicts are not just nancial.
He mentioned how we all have conicts in research or anything else in life,
despite our best intent to be disinterested. He feels that conicts of
interest are a major problem and that there is a need not just for disclosure,
but for change. He proposed that the entanglement between medicine and
industry is very deep . . . needing more work on disentanglement.
A Professor of Applied Ethics said that while authorship and disclosure
of conicts are better reported now than in the past, for some that was
never the problem. He considers disclosure of conict of interests has not
been terribly effective in ensuring that biomedical research is truly in the
public interest rather than an adjunct of the search for ever greater corpo-
rate protability.
When this debate is looked at in hindsight, it is worth remembering
how Korn (2000) proposed 3 years before the Association debate that:
The challenge for academic medicine is not to eradicate them (conicts of

interest), which is fanciful and would be inimical to public policy goals, but
to recognise and manage them sensibly and effectively. (pp. 2, 234)
Korn (2000) was proposing that researchers cannot be entirely free from
bias when doing research. A similar point was made by a Professor of
Psychiatry, who was not perturbed by conicts of interest because he does

not see vested interests as being a problem, and feels that they can some-
times be helpful for getting things done. For him the problem is not that
conicts are undisclosed, but rather that there is access to study data so
that biases can be examined.
The relevance of this case study to this book is not in relation to the
debate or its outcomes, but rather that it is important in its own right for
what it tells us about the usefulness and impact of conferences. It also has
relevance when compared with Case Study Three below.
Following on from the point made by Bembi (2016) that scholarly
production in the neoliberal academy is mainly reected by the commod-
ity value through the work of the natural and social sciences; we can see
that the conference had utilitarian value. The discussions were not theo-
retical but had direct implications for the running of the Association and
had practical consequences for the bureaucracy of the Association, and in
relation to its funding.
Income generation is central to the doctrine of neoliberalism. One of
the main points to come out of the Case Study was that several key players
were against research being used as a means for income generation. This
might reect an antipathy felt by some researchers towards neoliberalism.
Noise generation might be considered the default for many confer-
ences, but when a conference has a memorable presentation or stages an
impactful or important debate/discussion, like this case study, it goes
beyond mere noise. This was a debate that challenged how the
Association received its income, and had potentially serious consequences
for the employment of staff. The interviews reveal how some felt the
debate was not important. My own consideration is that the debate was
not only important in its own right for what it achieved, but that it went
beyond merely generating noise and had practical implications for the
operations of the Association.
ROOM 6: CASE STUDY THREE

In 2009, I attended an International conference, with a focus on health,
held biannually in Scotland. This brought together researchers and practi-
tioners interested in developing and using a novel programme of methods,
which had particular ethical and governance implications regarding data
access and sharing. The conference was made up of sequential plenary
presentations, and a choice of concurrent parallel sessions.
A consequence of the widening neoliberal agenda in academia has been

the importance of the commercial side of research, that is, the development
D in R&D (Banal-Estaol and Macho-Stadler 2010). In none of the Case
Studies was this as apparent as this one. It might be argued convincingly
that the conference represented a marketplace. It was a place where the
product, the novel method and the expertise of many of the attendees
were promoted as having commercial potential, which entailed a package
of processes, including governance, legal, ethical and technical support.
The conference began with a keynote presentation from an Emeritus
Professor of Philosophy who talked about ethical issues that were perti-
nent to the method. She was critical of legislation that sought to safeguard
the sharing of information and data, and proposed an analogy about
privacy in relation to data, whereby she argued that there should be a
rethink of information privacy in relation to condentiality so as to protect
aspects of privacy without specifying types of information. This would
remove ethical doubts regarding the research method.
In another keynote presentation, an Emeritus Professor of Population
Health spoke about technical matters relating to the research method in
relation to patient care. He gave a historical overview of the research
method, focusing on an example from a country, where data sets were
safeguarded by an approach referred to as the Honest Broker; then talked
about ve threats and ve opportunities regarding the research method.
A Programme Manager at a Research Centre queried current limitations
of the research method, and emphasised the value of the method in its
translation of results into improved health care for people who have
complex health needs.
Two statisticians introduced a programme to show how the research
method can support clinical trials. They explained how a specic study
trialled a specic drug, and that after the study ended there was a follow-
up using the novel research method. They found very few false positives in
terms of data, and therefore considered the research method was good for
ascertainment of death and the cause of death; concluding that the research
method is very low cost, unbiased, and useful for endpoints like death.
This was an unusual conference to attend because it featured presenta-
tions around one theme alone: the research method. Four years later (at a
different conference), I nally heard another academic critically evaluate
the method, because of the publics lack of awareness of the method being
now routinely used; she argued that the research method was ignoring
many peoples concerns.
My consideration is that the 2009 conference appeared to have a built in

framework for setting out its case, having ve steps. First, it appealed to
hearts and minds, to paraphrase a Consultant in Patient and Public
Involvement. This was done by rationalising the discussion in relation to a
larger ethical/philosophical debate. Second, it examined the benets of the
process (of the research method) that was being promoted. Third, it
reected on the challenges of the process/product that was being promoted.
Fourth, it explained how the process/product was innovative. Fifthly, it
appealed to costbenets to reiterate the importance of the commodity.
I have argued that the methods that were being promoted might be seen
as enabling the commodication of peoples health and welfare, reducing
medical records to a good that can be bought and sold as part of a larger
anonymised data set, and alienating the person from income raised through
the sale of their data (Nicolson 2013). A similar point was made in general
by a Professor of Humanities, who proposed that commodication is taking
over academia, yet is antithetical to the traditions of higher education. By
promoting the method at this conference, which can have nancial divi-
dends, the conference might be seen to be rooted in the neoliberal agenda.
The rationale for this particular way of doing research extended beyond
expanding knowledge and translating research ndings. One of the possi-
bilities was devising a new resource for generating income, through being
able to lease out secure anonymised data sets to other research groups.
The product was promoted at the conference which acted as the market-
place. This gives further reason to argue that the conference sat well within
neoliberalism.
Because of the novelty of this research method, the conference can be
seen as seeking to legitimate a new paradigm, that is, a novel way of doing
research. This gave it both a purpose and a potential utility, which I have
argued in the Opening Keynote are important aspects of the neoliberal
agenda. Therefore, this was not a place for a drawn-out ideological discus-
sion, although briey touched on by the philosopher, but rather to focus on
practical aspects and decision making that had a nancial consequence.
ROOM 4: CASE STUDY FOUR

In 2004, at a UK national conference with a focus on a particular research
methodology, an Associate Professor in Midwifery spoke about the impor-
tance of, and how to, conduct a particular research method. For myself
and others at the time, this was a relatively novel and exciting way of doing
research. But an underlying signicance of this session only became evi-

dent years later when I read around the Paradigm Wars in the social
sciences. It was by understanding the context of this that I really under-
stood how novel this proposed way of doing this type of research was.
Reecting back on the presentation from 2004 in relation to the paradigm
wars, the Associate Professor noted that:
The Paradigm Wars were relevant to my presentation at the time because

there was a need to bestow legitimacy on a particular research method. It
was important to note that the particular research method can augment
guidance because it gets at contextual matters in research.
By contrast when I spoke with another Associate Professor, she felt the
relevance of the paradigm wars in 2015 was less important now:
Its becoming less so with more focus on how to do methods. But some
people are still caught up with paradigm issues, and it is still in the
literature.
What was more important for her was the adoption of sound research
methods, specically the particular research methodology. These points
are stated here to highlight how the organisation and the conference
provided a space where academics were able to discuss on a more ideolo-
gical level, which might be seen as reecting the aforementioned luxury
in neoliberal times.
In 2011, I attended an international conference on methodology in
England. The conference was comprised of sequential plenary presenta-
tions and a choice of concurrent workshops, with the usual keynotes. At
one of these, a Professor of Sociology made a very important observation
about how the conference missed an opportunity to hold an important
debate with another academic group:
Its a short distance from venue one to venue two . . . and in these two cities
in the months of June and July; two international conferences are going on.
The International conference, with a focus on methodology here in venue
one this week . . . and just down the road the international conference, with a
focus on a type of research is going on at venue two. The venue two group is
privileging theory over a type of research . . . The venue one group is privile-
ging methods over theory. Theres a space in-between for a particular type
of inquiry here . . . But the conversations are going on in different places at
separate times, so its not a conversation. There seems to be little overlap

between the discourses. (Transcript available at https://lutube.leeds.ac.uk/
stumro, accessed January 2016)
There is a sense of competition and a lack of co-operation in what the

Professor was noting, which might be said to reect neoliberal ideology.
Specically, he was indicating a level of competition between the different
groups within the social sciences, and a lack of co-operation, in part played
out through the separate conferences.
Each of the three times that I attended this conference, I made the same
argument that the organisation needed to have a clear and consistent
identity. This became a point for wider discussion at the third conference,
when, at a question and answer session at the end of a guest speakers slot,
a Professor asked the speaker a question that was critical of the arguments
that I had previously made at the conference, about the lack of identity in
the organisation.
Professor: I often hear a criticism of the particular research discipline not

having a denition. That seems essentialist to me and we want to stay a diverse
group. Does the criticism of denition sound like essentialism to you?
Professor of Sociology: I think it does and I dont think its an appropriate
call. I think it should be left as open as possible.
Myself: I wonder if there is a danger that that leaves it open to be dened not
by itself, but by others, and so left open to criticism in many ways. I would
argue for being a group you need to have a clear identity for ourselves,
amongst ourselves, and amongst a wider audience, so people know what we
stand for and are quite clear on that. What would you say to that?
Professor of Sociology: I think your question is completely appropriate.
Now theres some people in the audience who were at the rst (another)
academic conference back in 2005 when we came together the last day of
the conference . . . and asked are we going to become an international con-
ference? Are we going to meet again next year? And what are we going to
do? And two people said Make it political. We want an academic group that
we can belong to, that we can be members of (around the world), where we
can defend ourselves as specic type of researchers against the criticisms
of another research group which is global. We want an Association that . . .
gives us credibility that is focused from the outset on multiple qualitative
forms of inquiry but for a particular person, not just to interpret the world
but to change it in terms of a social justice guideline initiative. Make it
political. Thats what they said and thats what the group decided that
afternoon . . . It was a momentous decision. Its never been debated
since . . . They sealed the identity at that meeting . . . Thats what this research
conference did . . . Is that an identity that you want for yourselves, or is there
an alternative to that identity?. (Transcript available at https://lutube.
leeds.ac.uk/stumro, accessed January 2016)
The point that I made in the three-way discussion might be seen to reect
neoliberal ideology, demanding a utility from the conference and a distinct
corporate identity on which it could promote itself as a product. The
Professors reply that the previous organisation wanted a politicised orga-
nisation was itself telling because it might be seen to have drawn a
scholarly conclusion that was ideological but had no marketable value.
When I spoke with an Associate Professor in 2015, we talked about the
issue of the identity of a particular research methodology. The problem for
her was that:
I dont think that even people who promote the research methodology have
a clear handle on what it is. Its a buzz word like triangulation was. People
think X and Y equals the research methodology. Theres no clarity. She
likened this to the use of the term Focus Group to reect an interview with
two or more people concurrently. People whack a label on (their methods),
but dont use it correctly . . . labels dont mean a lot.
There are different ways to view this conference. It could be seen to be

seeking to legitimate a new paradigm, because of the novelty in the
research method. However, unlike the conference in Case Study Three,
I do not think the purpose or utility of this conference was apparent, for
the reasons of the lack of identity which I proposed. There was arguably a
lack of unity at this conference, which, while permitting a range of discus-
sions and views to be made, ultimately reduced the impact of this con-
ference because of dilution in its message.
ROOM 8: CASE STUDY FIVE

At a conference with a focus on a particular medical condition, I made a
presentation that introduced and discussed potential challenges for the
project that I was working on at the time. In one slide, I considered
wider implications for the research project, based on the implementation
of a particular piece of legislation, and its repercussions for doing research.

Utilising the old adage that a picture speaks a thousand words, I showed
an image that was popular on social media at the time. The picture had
been edited to have a political context, as it was used by those on social
media to protest against the legislation. My decision to use the picture was
not to make a political statement, but to emphasise how there could be
possible ramications for research, including the project. The point might
have been lost on some in the audience and the intent behind using the
picture was probably misconstrued.
It might be said in general that conferences are places where buyers
come to inspect a product, which might be knowledge, methodological
skills or research in progress. There is not just an expectation that there
will be acceptance of the prevalent paradigm, but of the importance of the
professional identity of research (which was a point in Case Study Four),
and of the role of income generation by the neoliberal academy.
Conferences might no longer be a place to make a controversial or political
statement, even by chance, in a neoliberal age, where corporate identity
and the commodities derived from research are all important.
Parallel Session Two: Interviews
Abstract This session explains how the impact that a conference makes can
be at a paradigm or personal level. A conference might have a better chance of
having a real-world impact when it has political support. Beyond this, con-
ferences have a marketplace function, which can reect the neoliberal agenda.
Keywords Travel Culture Communication Impact Utility
This session reports an analysis of a set of interviews with people who have
attended academic conferences. The participants spoke about a range of
conferences, including those examined in Session One. The interviews
were driven by questions that reected the theoretical framework outlined
in the Opening Keynote. This session therefore goes beyond an analysis of
conferences in relation to neoliberalism and seeks to understand other
issues pertinent to those attending conferences. This session has not
anonymised the conferences discussed or the interviewees to give the
reader a context for what was said.
ROOM 7: TRAVEL
Travel as a Barrier
Several respondents spoke about the challenges of travelling to confer-
ences, and the barriers that this would present attending. Some were

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-49190-5_4
concerned about the environmental impact of travelling such a long dis-

tance, noting that those attending a conference contribute to the carbon
footprint through ight. Ray Moynihan, a long-time journalist and aca-
demic researcher, told me that he considered that a lot of money was
wasted on conferences, particularly industry-sponsored conferences,
because of the travel to get to and from them, and the danger of people
adding to their carbon footprint.
At a conference I attended in Spain, each delegate received a free
hardback book about the founder of the organisation. This hardback
tome that adorned delegates luggage on returning home might ironically
have added to the weight of each plane and so to the carbon footprint.
Reecting on the conferences that I have attended, I have calculated that
I travelled approximately 39,000 miles (roundtrip) to attend conferences.
The issue of distance and travel was an important factor for other
people attending a conference or not. Academics from the Southern
Hemisphere felt, because more Conferences are held in Europe and the
United States, that the time and distance spent travelling to conferences in
the Northern Hemisphere was a particular barrier to them attending,
because they were away from their ofce for longer than their northern
peers were. Pat Bazeley (an Associate Professor) said:
Living in Australia was a barrier to travelling to Northern Hemisphere

conferences. But it is difcult to travel back and forth, so I usually go for
at least a month at a time, and do a couple of conferences. Time and costs
are a barrier.
For some Southern Hemisphere academics, it made sense for them to

combine conference attendance with taking the opportunity to travel
before or after. For example, Julian Crane (Research Professor) who
lives and works in New Zealand said:
I hate travelling to conferences because I have 24 hours in a metal tube. If

I go to a Northern hemisphere conference, I usually combine it with visiting
relatives in the UK. This is invaluable in New Zealand as it is so far away from
anywhere else. I never have an issue combining holidays with conferences.
This indicates how academics from Australasia and the Southern

Hemisphere are disadvantaged by the distance to attend conferences,
which tend to be held in the Northern Hemisphere, and specically
PARALLEL SESSION TWO: INTERVIEWS 39
Europe. A cursory examination of the venues of the international con-

ference (in Case Study Two) that I attended lends weight to this argu-
ment. Of the 23 conferences that have been held, three quarters took place
in the Northern Hemisphere, with 11 in Europe and ve in North
America. Five were held in the Southern Hemisphere. The conference
was held ve times in Asia, once in South Africa and once in South
America. Before 2009 the majority of conferences were held the
Northern Hemisphere, including nine in Europe. In 2016 it returns to
Asia, being held in South Korea. Between 2009 and 2015 it has been held
three of seven times in Asia.
This conference is a major event in health care and medicine, the eld in
which I worked, and so I am familiar with it. This example may or may not
reect every international conference probably not. But it is a useful
example because it indicates how difcult it is to nd a suitable meeting
venue for an international organisation whose members are spread
worldwide.
Anyone who has attended even a small number of these conferences
will have had to travel considerable distances, inuencing their global
footprint. Julian Crane was of the opinion that a balance had to be made
against the carbon costs of conference travel. There are other costs.
The monetary cost of travel was a barrier to academics attending con-
ferences, especially if they required extensive travel. I asked Edwin van
Teijlingen, a Professor of Reproductive Health Research, what the barriers
to attending conferences were for him, and he instinctively replied Time
and money because some conferences can be very expensive to get to and
are held in expensive venues. However, there were times when he was
invited to present a keynote paper at a conference and on some occasions
the cost of getting to and attending that conference were met by the
organisers.
Vanessa H, a University Research Fellow, said that she found it frus-
trating when a conference was held at the weekend because that was
outside the working week. She added that time scheduling was an issue
for her attending conferences, giving the example of conferences being
held around the time of Thanksgiving in the United States (end of
November) which is a US Public Holiday, but the middle of term time
in the United Kingdom and therefore she could not attend.
Vanessa H raised a further issue of whether or not travel is considered as
work time, and if so, is the person expected to be working during their
travels? This might not be practical for a person on a busy train where
space is at a premium, or travelling long haul by ight, and so having to

reacclimatise to a different time zone. The travelling academic is not
always able to work in transit, despite the best will in the world.
When the academic lands in a country, like all other passengers, they are
met by Border Control. At a recent conference, held in Cambridge, it was
reported that an unconrmed number of delegates were unable to attend
due to visa refusals or inability to enter the country (http://www.asauk.
net/visa-refusals-call-for-information/).
THE OPPORTUNITY TO TRAVEL: CONFERENCES AND CULTURE

Several academics that I spoke with said that conferences enable attendees
to take the opportunity to travel. It is acceptable to take annual leave
before or after the conference, to visit places that might otherwise remain
unseen. Therefore, the academic only has to supplement their own accom-
modation outwith the conference, with airfare and conference accommo-
dation paid for by the university, usually through a conference grant.
Lester Firkins, a self-employed Consultant in Patient and Public
Involvement, who presented at Academic events, spoke about the oppor-
tunity to travel and was quick to emphasise the benet of this in relation to
his being at the conference:
I wonder why people go to an International Conference for two to three

days then go home, instead of taking the opportunity to travel? I nd
taking annual leave after the conference gave me more of a focus on the
conference at the time, as well as making me more relaxed (during the
conference).
Therefore, taking the opportunity to travel at a conference was not a

selsh act for him because it had a practical benet. He also wondered if
some people might use the opportunity to meet with other Academics
after the conference and visit their departments something that could
not be done during the conference itself.
Some respondents took a different view. Willy Maley, a Professor of
English Studies, told me how he felt that people who go to conferences
did so because they sought the opportunity to visit local restaurants.
Pat Bazeley, who lives and works in Australia, made a (perhaps) similar
point, noting that she preferred to do minimal touring when going to
conferences.
My own view is that the benets of travel, in general, should not be

missed. The chance for travel is the opportunity to be exposed to a new
culture. Edwin van Teijlingen explained to me how he considers confer-
ences in relation to culture:
As a Sociologist, I like to observe different cultures, how people interact,

even if it is only in an airport. Conferences themselves have their own
culture. They do not represent the culture of the location where it is being
held. Instead they bring in an International Conglomerate, who speak
English and not the local language; and so are more global in their outlook.
A similar point was made by Willy Maley who felt that universities were
well suited for hosting conferences with an international audience,
because:
A lot of Universities are like the TARDIS: they land in a particular land but
do not assimilate to its culture.
Some conferences make the effort to relate to the culture of the venue.
This is most easily achieved when conferences last 2 or more days, and
have one or more social events organised. For example, at the rst inter-
national conference I attended in Spain, there was a reception for dele-
gates, an Olympic Tournament sports event (reecting the 1992
Olympics being held in Spain) and a farewell party. A staple event of
many conferences is the conference dinner, which presents a convivial
opportunity for delegates to make new acquaintances, or catch-up with
colleagues over food and drink.
International conferences have often sought to promote the host city
and an aspect of the local culture, because delegates are from far aeld. An
example of a conference I attended that promoted the cultural history of
the venue was held in Switzerland. The theme of the conference dinner
was to create an atmosphere through listening to music, which, it was said,
was what love is all about. The organisers daughter sang a selection of
operatic works at the dinner, including Wie viele Zeit verlor ich, Dich zu
lieben (How much time I lost in loving you), which brought forth a wave
of emotions to many attendees. To round things off there was a display of
precision drumming from a member of the Basel Top Secret Drum Corps.
Wolf Langewitz, a Professor of Psychosomatic Medicine, who orga-
nised the event, explained his reasoning:
I aimed to give people a sense of what makes Basel good: the Basler Fasnacht
celebrations which start on the Monday directly after Ash Wednesday which
are an integral part of Basel culture and society.
He feels that music touches the heart and soul, therefore the idea behind
the songs that were performed by his daughter was to convey the
problem of using a reductionist approach to communication, because
of their potency. For him the aim of the dinner was to Show that an
atmosphere was created through communication (the singing and music)
that could not be categorised by any theory of communication. He per-
ceived this conference dinner was a challenge to delegates composure,
and he noted how some people said that they were moved to tears by the
event.
Universities do not always do as good a job of promoting local
culture. I spoke with Willy Maley who attended the conference in
Case Study One as a student. He told me how the conference provided
delegates (who could afford it) the opportunity to enjoy a pre-
Conference retreat at a scenic resort. He however felt the conference
ignored the local cultural geography and history of the host city, in
particular its socio-economic history. The commodication of the
venue as a cultural attraction is something that needs to be carefully
considered. An attractive venue may be an added incentive for attend-
ing a conference, although it is expected that the primary reason would
remain the academic value. What this indicates is the importance of the
purpose of a conference.
ROOM 9: COMMUNICATION
Gross and Fleming (2011) proposed that a purpose of the conference was
to enable intellectual communication between people, through presenting
and discussing ndings from research. As an academic applying to my
university to attend a conference, my primary justication was to present
work. If I were not doing this, I normally would not get to attend the
conference. Therefore, the conference presentation as a means for provid-
ing intellectual communication can then be considered a crucial aspect of
being an academic at a conference. There are two components of com-
municating: the presentation style and the intellectual content, which
participants spoke about.
PRESENTATION STYLE
Communicating at a conference takes several forms, from a workshop (which
is usually an interactive session with delegates), to discussing a poster, or
providing an oral presentation. The bottom line is that presenting information
is crucial for sharing knowledge. However, the importance of presenting style
cannot be overstated, as was noted by Lester Firkins that in general:
Conferences are limited because they rely on the style of the presenter more
than the content. A presentation could be strong in content, but this is not
noticed by the audience because of the poor presentation style.
This might be a worrying observation because for an Academic audience,

in theory it is the content and the reliability of the content that is
important.
Lester Firkins opinion was that a good presentation:
Put simple thoughts out there; where the key purpose of a presentation
would be to change hearts and minds. What I want is for people at a
conference to say that you made me stop and think.
He did not merely emphasise the importance of presentation style, but

also the signicance of sharing knowledge, through content, for a
purpose.
Julian Crane similarly recounted how he was often not impressed with
keynote presentations at conferences, saying that:
Set piece presentations by leading gures in the area, did not give the
opportunity for discussion or debate. Over the last few years these have
become Hollywood like events with an unwelcome and unnecessary razz-
matazz I nd small workshops much more useful they allow for better
discussion and interaction.
He was not alone in expressing disregard for the standard conference

presentation. Arthur Schafer, a Professor of Applied Ethics felt some
conference presentations were difcult to follow and boring. Although
he was referring to his own eld, his point has a relevance to presentations
in general, because as he noted:
Presenting ones ideas and arguments in a technical language meant to be

understood by a reader can result in poor comprehension when they are
spoken, often rapidly, to an audience unfamiliar with the ideas and arguments.
John Ioannidis, a Professor of Medicine, told me that he thinks confer-

ences can be measured on a gradient, where some presentations are more
helpful than others. What makes a presentation useful is the size and
participation of the audience:
It is useful when there is a limited audience who all participate in the

discussion. This particular meeting would have a concrete agenda. At larger
meetings there are pseudo-participants who present a poster or oral pre-
sentation, but offer little to the science development.
Iain Chalmers, the coordinator of the James Lind Initiative, made a

similar point, saying that he thinks Keynote lectures are not a good way
to get evidence across; I prefer smaller group work where there can be
discussion.
One of the considerations I have sought to explore is that conferences
generate noise. A literal example arose from speaking with Anne-Marie
Cunningham, a GP, who recalled how conferences feature many stands as
well as rooms with people speaking, which she found difcult to tune into
some times. This might not be avoidable, because for a conference to
function, it requires many people to speak.
Willy Maley was critical of a trend in conferences in the United States,
where people have to do 5-min presentations. His opinion was that this
probably reected the Twitter generation and their lack of attention.
Lester Firkins told me how he approached presenting to a room of
Academics and Medics (as a lay person) with perhaps perceived lower
levels of potential importance:
I used various methods to get impact, the use of humour (self-deprecating,

for example poking fun at my background as a banker), prompting emo-
tional reaction, and getting across the key message. I gave examples in my
presentation; not evidence. Being a lay person I felt I could get away with
saying things that others (researchers) could not
Stanley Fish, a Professor of the Humanities, explained to me that he is

wary of presenters who are Super-Polite because he thinks under the
surface lies snarkiness; that is, the person presenting might be short-
tempered or irritable. This can sometimes become evident during the
Q&A (question and answer) session. Another phenomenon during the
Q&A is the (perceived) ofcious person who uses a question to make a
point for the purpose of self-aggrandisement. This aspect has, I consider,
been captured perfectly by a cartoon of a conference Q&A where the chair
tells members of the audience that there is only time for one more tedious
in length, self-aggrandising question.
I asked Stanley Fish for his views on Q&A. He said that he felt ofcious
people tended to emerge in Q&A when the speaker had lost command of
the stage. Other people then sought the limelight from the speaker. He
recounted how the philosopher Professor John Searle warned him about
such people, telling him to watch out for the head-hunters at confer-
ences. By this he meant people who will seek the scalp of a big name
academic in an argument.
Lindley (2009) spoke of how she became conditioned not to actively
confront high-prole invited guests at conferences, or to query a promi-
nent corporate sponsor being present at the conference. Her point was
that academics are able to debate serious issues amongst themselves, but
not with the invited guests at a conference because civility is the keystone
of academic discourse. Reecting on my own experience as an academic,
I was never shy to make observations or ask difcult questions at a con-
ference; either to invited speakers or other attendees. I might on some
occasions have fared better to have played the game (and kept quiet), but
my ethos was to remain true to my values. Being an academic can be a
precarious balancing act at times.
COMMUNICATION CONTENT
The previous section has already indicated the importance of the content
of what is spoken. What is being communicated remains for most atten-
dees the most important aspect of a conference; the fabled knowledge
dissemination. A common feature is academics explaining and promoting
work from a current research study. For example, Edwin van Teijlingen
said:
I go to conferences to convey to fellow academics about research Ive been

involved with. Dissemination is important, and so is picking up information
about new projects from other people.
Academia functions by the progression of knowledge and therefore places

great emphasis on what is being communicated. For example, a Professor
of Professional Studies reected this sentiment noting that an important
function of a conference presentation is the means for sharing new knowl-
edge. He said:
Each Conference paper is like a mini-publication, entering new knowledge

into the eld. Conferences allow cutting edge knowledge to be heard before
it becomes a publication. The knowledge is produced before and then
shared at the conference. This is part of the knowledge machine /knowledge
enterprise.
John Ioannidis told me that he thinks conferences can shape what is

considered to be important and new knowledge, by creating rules on
what is held to be important to disseminate, so that powerful experts
magnify their message.
In contrast, some of the academics I spoke to were critical of presenta-
tion content (in general). For example, Julian Crane was not impressed
with recent developments in conference presentations:
To the conferences that I go to, there seems to have been a reduction in new
research presentations and an increase in plenary reviews. Many of the
scientic presentations seem to be less well attended or presented in ever
increasing numbers of posters. People usually have to submit abstracts up to
one year in advance to present at a conference; therefore, they submit work
that is already complete and therefore not novel.
Karsten Jrgensen, a Health Services Researcher, offered similar senti-

ments, proposing that:
Poor quality presentations result from people having to throw something

together when they apply for departmental funding to go to conference,
because if they dont present they cannot apply for funding to attend it.
As was explained in the Opening Keynote, many people submit abstracts

that are based on work in progress, for example, a PhD. Edwin van
Teijlingen said that he found a conference presentation to be more useful
when it was presenting such work in progress. This might be because one
can offer comments and critique that will impact on the direction of the
latter stages of the work. Vanessa H, who works in the humanities, was
critical of conference presentations as a medium for sharing ideas, noting
that it is not possible to conduct an adequate discussion of a cutting-edge
theory in the humanities in 20 min.
The importance of the content goes beyond the presentations them-
selves and is also crucial for academics to discuss matters with one another.
Reecting on my own experience again, I recognise how at a particular
conference I struggled to articulate adequately my concerns and criticisms
I had surrounding medical records access and reuse. It was not until years
later when I heard people talk about the concept of the Neoliberal
agenda in research that I had the language to be able to express my
concern. Conferences might be a more favourable venue for those who
nd it easy to articulate points in the moment of debate.
Conferences do not always guarantee different groups will discuss and
debate. Nigel Fabb, a Professor of Literary Linguistics, spoke about a
conference, which included academics from different backgrounds. He
highlighted how different elds of social science have different academic
languages, and noted that:
The conference had different groups of academics, people from the elds of
literary studies and linguistics. People were polite to each other; rather than
ghting for their corners. The reason for this was that there was a lack of
argument due to a lack of understanding between the different groups, arising
from their very different ways of working, and underlying philosophies.
A similar point was made by Ms Abby Norman, a journalist who has a

chronic condition and was a presenter at a conference. She recounted
occasions where she had felt there was a lack of communication between
people attending workshops, because they tted into silos and so were not
talking to each other. For Edwin van Teijlingen, the opposite was the
problem. He suggested that it is a problem when people attending a
conference speak the same (technical) language, because this does not
challenge the host paradigm.
Trisha Elliott, a Consultant Physician, wondered if the wrong people
were attending conferences:
Meetings attract those who already believe in the subject. I sometimes think
it would be fun if the Royal College of Physicians muddled the tickets and
we all attended meetings outside our comfort zones . . . Communication and
humanity are important to me, so I go to meetings that reinforce that,

perhaps not updating my technical skills. Those (medics) from more tech-
nical specialties go to meetings to learn about new tricks and gadgets, and
maybe dont reect on their communication . . .
This analysis has highlighted how communication at conferences is not

just about what is said (the content), or how it is said (the presentation
style), but who is speaking and who is listening.
SOCIAL MEDIA
It has been hoped that social media might overcome the problems of
travelling to a conference. It was thought that this would be benecial,
not just because it would enable people to attend a conference from
remote parts of the world, but that it would stop people from having to
endure the long journey.
An Adjunct Professor of Family Medicine proposed that because con-
ferences are becoming expensive, that online conferencing might become
more important. In addition, it was noted by Julian Crane that webinars
can work well, especially for people in New Zealand, as they are so far away
from the Northern Hemisphere.
Social media is becoming more and more an important communication
tool at a conference, for attendees to share information with others at the
conference, and to disseminate presentation ndings to people outside the
conference. The most convenient and most commonly used means for
doing so is probably Twitter (https://twitter.com/login/), an online
social network which allows people to share messages (Tweets) of
140 characters or less in length.
I spoke with Anne-Marie Cunningham, who has shared information
from and about conferences on Twitter. She told me how she started
#Meded to alert other like-minded medics to useful information. She
explained how she used Twitter to share conference slide pictures and to
make bullet points of key points said in a presentation. She would also
share details about any papers that were mentioned and provide a link to
them.
Cunningham is not entirely in favour of using Twitter as a dissemina-
tion tool at conferences and thinks that some things are very bad, for
example, displaying the Tweets in real time on screen, which can be
distracting. An issue for her was whether it is wise to share things that
are merely a personal opinion, or just objective and factually correct

information. Cunningham spoke of how trust is a key issue when sharing
information via Twitter. Her feeling was that there should be a responsi-
bility in sharing information in Tweets about a conference, and she
wonders if there should be a decision made at conferences on whether
to opt-in or opt-out of Tweeting about it.
Abby Norman told me how Twitter helped get her message across to
others not at the conference. She was glad that people were picking out
parts of her talk and re-Tweeting them. This later gave her a sense of what
were the highlights for people. Twitter gave her a sense of what people
were thinking in the moment when they viewed her talk and she was
grateful that people live Tweeted because this showed what parts of her
talk people found most poignant. This suggests Twitter can provide a real
time gauge on the impact of ones presentation.
A more practical problem with social media replacing conferences was
noted by Julian Crane:
Meeting people in bars is something that cannot be done electronically;

talking with people informally in a relaxed setting can facilitate efforts to
make collaborations.
This highlights less the failure of social media than the opportunity that
conferences afford delegates to meet on an informal basis. It emphasises
how conferences provide an environment where academics can network
and socialise with like-minded people.
ROOM 10: POSTER PRESENTATIONS

The poster presentation is a distinct and unique way to share knowledge at
a conference. It too bears a reection on the neoliberalisation of the
academy. The simplest way to indicate this is to understand that a con-
ference is a marketplace. This can make the poster an instrument for the
advertisement of a product, knowledge. The people who interact with the
poster are not just delegates but consumers who can benet from taking in
the information it promotes. The poster also acts as a representation of
the theoretical and methodological skills of the person and team who
developed the poster.
The neoliberal emphasis on efciency and utility has particular rele-
vance and irony to a poster. A poster can be an efcient means for
sharing information because the person does not usually have to stand
next to the poster to convey its content. As a stand-alone device, the
poster should be able to do that by itself. However, to develop a good
poster can be a much more time-consuming task than developing a
spoken presentation. The effort to develop a poster might not be
reciprocated by interest or comment when displayed. Conferences
might then want to consider replacing the format with something
that has more appeal than a poster.
The poster presentation can epitomise a tension between style and
content. Conferences are often an overload of information on the sense:
the array of talks, and the aisles of posters. The latter can sometimes feel
like a wall of noise, with what seems like countless identical posters. But
occasionally an engaging poster will break through the noise and engage
the audience. This is often a novel designed poster, which will set it apart
from the waves of posters in the hotel lobby, before its content has even
been read. My own experience of conferences was that a couple of posters
stood out for me as being novel and engaging at the time, and remaining
memorable when I was writing up this book.
The rst poster by Muller, Siegfried, Volmink et al., was entitled Its all
About Quality: Quality Assessment of Observational Studies in the Cochrane
Review Male Circumcision for Prevention of Heterosexual Acquisition of
HIV in Men. At the conference, I had made a circle around it in the
abstract book, because my Masters thesis had examined HIV transmis-
sion, and so I was drawn to the subject. In 2016, I did not remember the
title or the content. It was the design of the poster that I recalled, which
featured a picture of a young South African man who was to undergo
traditional initiation rites including circumcision. In my minds eye,
I could see the cloaked gure with his face smeared by white body paint.
There is the old adage that a picture speaks a thousand words. It was
memorable at the time and engaged me; leading me to then search out the
subsequent publications in The Lancet and Cochrane Library. In an envir-
onment where the visibility of ones research is more important than ever,
a conference poster is a means for not only publicising ones research in
the moment; but for leaving a lasting impression that can draw people
back to that work a decade later.
The second poster was by Roter, Larson and Cooper; entitled The
impact of turn taking on ratings of physician behaviour and demeanour:
A simulation. This was designed to resemble a comic strip in the style of a
Roy Lichtenstein painting. Reading its description in the abstract book,
I was not initially inclined to view it. It wasnt my area of research, and so
on paper I dismissed viewing it. That however changed when I saw the
design of the poster, which grabbed my attention. It featured comic-strip
images from the website Truer than True Romance, in the style of a
1950s comic strip, which allowed the authors to add their own dialogue in
the speech bubbles to provide the message of the poster.
As the Distinguished Service Professor who designed it, Debra Roter
explained to me when talking about it: She said:
In class we often discussed how quite complex and abstract information can
be effectively conveyed through story telling approaches and how much our
audiences, regardless of literacy skill, nd these materials engaging, interest-
ing and fun to read . . . I wondered if study results could be effectively
conveyed through a graphic narrative lens and if researchers who expect
presentation formality would like it . . . although it took a lot to explain why I
used the approach that I did and that I was a serious researcher conveying
signicant ndings!
She makes an important point here that she had to explain to conferees
that while the poster was not of a design normally accustomed to an
academic audience, that the message was reliable.1
ROOM 14: PROFESSIONAL SOCIALISATION

A downside of online conferencing is that there is no opportunity to meet
and speak in person with other academics, which as was noted, is impor-
tant for those who work on the other side of the world. Many respondents
similarly spoke about the value of networking at conferences in its own
right.
The opportunity to network was valued by everyone that I spoke with.
Iain Chalmers told me that he considers a specic purpose of conferences
is to enable people who rarely meet to have a chance to do so. This
would be vital for people who are collaborating in research projects and
do so by telephone and Internet connection, because they live not only
in separate countries, but also often on different continents. Meeting
with fellow researchers at a conference is therefore not just practical, but
can enable academics to support one another. For example, Willy Maley
told me that he feels conferences allow academics to meet with peers
from other universities who have similar problems. Ergo, they can provide
support.
Conferences as places to socialise present the opportunity to meet
colleagues and make new colleagues. For example, a Professor in
Professional Studies told me that he found conferences to be a good
place to meet editors, publishers, and colleagues who he wants to work
with. He gave me the example of attending a conference dinner when he
sat next to the owner of a qualitative data analysis software company.
He had never met this person before the dinner but was now a good
friend. Having been introduced by chance at the conference, the professor
had found his product had helped his research.
Karsten Jrgensen similarly felt that conferences were valuable because
the presentations can make journal editors aware of what people are
currently researching. This suggests that conferences provide an opportu-
nity for academics to not just meet editors, but to suggest to them new
insights and areas of knowledge, through possible publications.
Arthur Schafer suggested that:
While there are often benets from presenting at conferences, for example
getting critique of ones work from peers, and sharing ones ideas with
them, another potentially more important reason many people go to con-
ferences is to meet colleagues in ones eld and thereby to establish the
possibility of networks or other forms of collaboration.
The notion of conferences facilitating professional development is not

just relevant to senior academics. Jon Deeks, a Professor of Biostatistics,
told me that he encourages his students to go to conferences as part of
their professional development. Conferences are seen by some academics
as a means for providing young academics the chance to be exposed to
professional socialisation. Julian Crane told me that he feels that it is
important that younger researchers developing their careers have a prior-
ity to attend off shore meetings. Stanley Fish made a similar point,
noting that students at conferences get to see in action what academic
work is like, in particular through debates that account for academic
matters.
Conferences do not just present the opportunity for the young academic
to learn about the academic community and its culture. It can have a much
more practical benet. As Vanessa H suggested, big conferences tend to be
job markets with PhD students presenting their work. This again reects the
notion of the conference a marketplace. More specically, a similar point

was made by Lindley (2009) about graduate students using the conference
for the purpose of job seeking, networking, and learning. In addition,
Vanessa H spoke of how organising a panel discussion at a conference was
a useful exercise for her because she then developed networks with the
people taking part whom she would invite to present at her departmental
seminar series.
By contrast, Pratap Rughani (a Reader in Documentary Film), attended
a conference as an undergraduate student. He noted that at the time of
that conference:
It was unclear to me what professional socialisation meant . . . It seems like

a term from today projected back thirty years and it needs context to help
bridge the worlds of undergraduate life and professional academic life. If
I knew about it then it could well have felt intimidating or confusing
as I was a 2nd year student with a strong interest in how study could
develop positive social change that is, not looking for professional socia-
lisation in the sense of developing a career. I didnt see myself as wanting
(or not necessarily knowing the codes) to be able to network usefully in a
way that was about developing a career rather than exploring deeper beliefs
and values.
Conferences are not necessarily helpful as stages for socialising for all
attendees. Specically, it might be that early stage academics are not always
in a suitable situation to proactively seek means to be socialised.
Some respondents recited the adage that the real work at a confer-
ence is done at the bar, that is, people get more benet from talking with
colleagues (over a drink) than they do watching a presentation or taking
part in a workshop. The point here is not strictly about enjoying an
alcoholic beverage, but rather the importance of face-to-face contact.
For example, David Healy (a Professor of Psychiatry) said that he felt
that one of the most useful things about a conference is the opportunity
to meet and discuss research issues with someone, face to face, while
Julian Crane found talking with people informally in a relaxed setting
can facilitate efforts to make collaborations. What is important it seems
is not so much that people are speaking in the bar of a hotel lobby
where the conference is held, but rather that they are speaking in person
in a relaxed environment, presumably away from the stresses of the
university ofce.
ROOM 5: THE DELEGATE AT THE CONFERENCE

People attend, present, listen, ask questions and debate at conferences. For
the period of time of the conference, the venue provides not just a place to
work, but also a place to eat, drink and sleep; be that a hotel or university
campus. Conferences are therefore not just workplaces for attendees; they
are places where people are being, and as such, this impact on their
welfare. If I could pretend to understand Heidegger better, I would try
to relate this to Dasein here.
My own experience is that conferences can sometimes be alienating
events. Academics are fond of cliques, and if you are not from the same
university, share the same academic beliefs or interests, or dont have
super-good social and communication skills, then the conference can be
a lonely place. This can be more so if you dare to speak against the grain.
There were occasions when I found myself feeling isolated after saying
something that went against the general consensus.
In recent years there had been an increasing trend for non-academics to
attend and present at conferences. This was common in my area of
research, Health Services Research, where patients and other lay people
would sometimes present. If someone has a chronic condition or a dis-
ability, this could be a potential barrier to their attending a conference.
However, some conferences are now prepared for this. Abby Norman who
presented at a conference noted:
The conference I attended (Medicine X at Stanford in 2015) was aware that

some patients who attend are chronically ill; so they provided a room where
we could go to recuperate. This was a social situation where I did not feel
embarrassed to possibly lie down, if need be. This was a supportive environ-
ment with understanding people. The organisers were open to peoples
needs, which reduced stigma.
Abby told me how she felt before attending and then once she was at the
conference:
I was nervous only because I was speaking; therefore, approached it feeling

intimidated. In part I was telling my story where Doctors are God, but I
went against them with regards to my medical problems. I would not have
been nervous if only viewing . . . Med-X was set up in a way that patients,
medics, and researchers were given equal weight: Everyone has an equal
voice. There was open dialogue, even over the coffee break between the
different delegates. The Kaiser CEO even engaged with different delegates.
Reecting on my own experience of conferences, I recognise Bell and

King (2010) point about the need for endurance (see Opening Keynote)
at conferences all too well. It was a phenomenon in my notes that
I referred to as Confy fatigue, whereby at some point in the days
proceedings, I would be overwhelmed by the barrage of continual pre-
sentations. I felt uncontrollable tiredness and unable to maintain atten-
tion. The only thing I could do was escape the humid connes of the
packed rooms. I am sure that I was not the only one who felt like this at
times; but I may have had more reason to be so, because I suffer from sleep
attacks due to a historic brain insult. Quite often the small, standing room
only boxes that attendees present in are not a conducive environment for
furthering knowledge.
There is one last point here that is important to note. Conferences
would not run without the help of the stewards (and others). Many times
students provide free labour to help run conferences. They may receive
free travel and accommodation (if the conference is overseas); and so can
take the chance to travel or be tourists. Some might see this as being the
opportunity to gain work experience; others as a means for inexpensive
conference support.
ROOM 13: THE IMPACT OF CONFERENCES: ARE THEY

USEFUL OR NOT?
This book is looking at the impact of the neoliberal agenda on confer-
ences. Because utility is a central part of this doctrine, it is important to
understand if and how conferences are useful. Utility is therefore a crucial
aspect of a conference. The concept of utility lies at the heart of neoliber-
alism, and so indicates the importance of understanding conferences in
relation to neoliberalism.
Iain Chalmers said as a point in general that he feels conferences are
often marketplace meetings selling a commodity and seeking an endorse-
ment. Conferences are well placed to promote the commercial side of
research, for example, the stalls selling books or equipment. This is a prime
example of how a conference has utility, by selling a product; and can be
said to reect a drive to neoliberalism in the Academy. There is a less
explicit way in which conferences reinforce the neoliberal agenda; when

they promote a commercial message, for example the expertise of con-
ducting research using a novel method.
Stanley Fish explained how he considered conferences to have great
importance and value. He said that he attended them so that he could feel
alive with his profession, because conferences provide the opportunity to
hear exemplary instances of research work, and to debate contested aca-
demic points of view. The conferences that he attended that were most
memorable for him had featured scholars whom he considered were at the
top of their game, what he called All Star Events.
When respondents talked about conferences having an impact, they
tended to speak about this at a personal level. Nigel Fabb considered that
looking back, running a conference helped his career development at the
time. He then added that as a point in general, he feels conferences can
inuence on the individual developing networks, but not on the eld as a
whole. Vanessa H made a similar point:
Attending conferences are important at a personal level rather than a dis-

ciplinary one. Organising a Panel discussion at a conference is a useful
exercise because one can then develop networks with the people taking
part. Conferences can also be used to attract speakers for seminar series;
talent spotting to nd interesting speakers.
The impact that a conference might have is probably related to the

socialisation of the person attending. This was hinted at by Jon Deeks
who said that he feels that the longer one is in their research career, the less
often they hear something new at a conference. However, he felt that
excellent presentations could inspire ones priorities, helping one to
reorganise their work.
Julian Crane also considered conferences helpfulness can depend on
where you are on your career trajectory, explaining how attending some
conferences early in his career, in particular one around asthma, helped his
career development.
Edwin van Teijlingen gave two examples of how he considered
conferences he had attended had a wide impact. He told me about a
conference where there was a push to make global maternity care a
worldwide issue. He also gave the example of a conference he helped to
organise in Nepal, which received support from the Government. This
enabled the Government to recognise the importance of the agenda
around Maternity issues and in particular that it was vital to tackle

health inequalities.
The crucial aspect with both conferences was that they had politicians
speaking, which raised media attention and got their issues on the political
agenda. Edwin van Teijlingen noted:
Over the years Ive realised you need politicians on board. Research dis-
seminates the ndings which can then be acted upon by politicians. You
therefore need conferences to make a big political change. You also need
conferences that enable the researcher to see a different side to research; for
example, by learning a new innovative method of analysis.
The importance of this cannot be downplayed and could be adapted as a

possible framework for enabling a conference to have an impact. Another
respondent, Pat Bazeley, told me how she had been to a conference in
Japan in 2015, which had an early morning meet the experts session
where delegates could book for a small group discussion. She noted that
there were also Question and Answer panel sessions after three consecutive
keynote presentations which she felt worked.
The process in which a conference can have impact is probably only
relevant to applied elds, for example medicine or health care. It is difcult
to see what relevance it would have to say a conference in the humanities.
This was acknowledged by Nigel Fabb who said how linguistics and
literature conferences dont make a difference in the way that health care
conferences might, because they have less impact on peoples lives.
A similar point was made when I asked Stanley Fish if he thought con-
ferences produced noise. Coming from the eld of humanities, he felt
there was no noise; that all talks were important and valuable. However,
when I pointed out to him how what was presented at a humanities
conference would differ from a health care conference, he could appreciate
what I meant by the noise hypothesis and agreed that he could see how
some quantitative-based presentations might be noise.
It is important to recognise how conferences are not always useful, and
do not always make an impact. Edwin van Teijlingen noted that
Conferences cannot be completely novel because they have to prepare
the groundwork on which they are based. What this reects is the
problem of currency; because conferences are based on work and material
that can be a year or older, the presentations are not always groundbreak-
ing in terms of adding to knowledge.
Ray Moynihan was critical of the usefulness of conferences, particularly

industry sponsored conferences, considering that much of conferences in
general are asinine, and so a lot of money is wasted on conferences.
The usefulness of a conference goes beyond it taking place in the
moment. For example, Abby Norman spoke about how she wanted to
speak to physicians and challenge the faulty medical care system, with the
hope that she might change the attitude of some of the physicians.
However, she wondered if the impact she had on physicians attitudes
carried beyond the conference. It might be that to do so, a framework,
would need to be in place.
Lester Firkins told me how he thinks profound conference presenta-
tions might make people think more than ones that present specic
evidence. However, he said he personally is not aware of any evidence
that conferences in themselves have led to ground-shaking change.
A nal problem for why conferences do not have an impact was noted
by Abby Norman. She told me how she felt that some people who spoke at
a conference, for example the CEO of a pharmaceutical Company were
preaching to the choir. She thought the people who should have heard
the message were not actually there in her audience.
It might seem self-evident that conferences will seek to make an impact,
and so one might reasonably ask why a conference would not want to be
useful. But speaking with conference attendees, it became evident that the
impact of a conference is not necessarily at a meta-theoretical level. As the
interviewees noted, sometimes a conference had an impact for them when
they were, for example able to speak with a remote colleague, or nd out
about a vacancy.
These two parallel sessions have presented examples of how conferences
can feed off and feed into the neoliberal agenda in academia. Travel has
been identied as a barrier, which can have knock-on implications for
knowledge development when it impacts on who does and does not
attend the conference. Respondents also spoke about factors of impor-
tance during the conference, which can be seen to reect socialisation.
The Closing Keynote draws these ndings to a conclusion.
NOTE
1. I can recognise where she is coming from here when I think about this book.
I have wondered if the novel chapter headings, and perhaps at times the
subjective examples are too left-eld for academic conventions
Closing Keynote
Abstract This session explains how the neoliberal agenda has relevance to
conferences, affecting their accessibility, what might be permitted for
debate to maintain corporate identity, and there being a competitive
rather than co-operative edge. My work comes with a health warning
and suggests three reasons why academic conferences might be considered
a (neoliberal) commodity.
Keywords Travel Personal level Academic freedom Corporate

identity Neoliberal commodity
This exploratory study can add to our understanding of conferences and,

based on the initial choice of direction arising from the framework, has
revealed features that will be helpful to consider by those attending or
organising conferences.
CONFERENCE TRAVEL
The neoliberal market is built on the free movement of labour (Egan
2003), whereby for workers who are able to, they can repatriate to
work. It is not unusual for academics to work across several universities
on short-term contracts before settling in one university for a period of
time. Academics therefore lead an unsettled, if not nomadic, life until they

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-49190-5_5
nd an elusive tenured post. There is also an expectation that they will be

able to travel to attend and present at a conference. Getting there is not a
simple matter because there are many barriers to an academic travelling to
and attending a conference, including nancial and distance.
Where a conference is held will impact on who attends, who does not,
and will have a consequence for what is discussed or not, thus having
implications for knowledge sharing and development. A conference atten-
dee from a particular country or ethnic background might feel dissuaded
from attending a conference abroad if they feel they might receive unto-
ward attention from Border Control. Unfortunately, the recent example
(see pp 40) has shown that this already happens. This is not helpful for
knowledge sharing/development, and reects badly on the host nation.
There may also be an issue if/when the United Kingdom leaves the
European Union what is referred to as Brexit. British passport holders
might have to apply for visas to attend conferences in EU countries. As
with so much in relation to the United Kingdom and the EU right now, it
remains to be seen if this deters or not some to attend such conferences in
the future.
Not all academics have the freedom at all times to travel to conferences,
or other academic events held outwith the university, which might have
consequences for their professional development if they, for example, are
unable to attend a workshop at a conference which runs training in a novel
research method. There are ways around this now with technological
development, but these have their limitations for the person seeking to
experience the conference in person.
Inevitably, time and money are barriers to people being able to travel to
and attend conferences. No-one explicitly spoke about the barrier of care-
giving stopping them from attending conferences. This is probably a
reection on the sample that I drew from. However, the problem of
when conferences are scheduled was mentioned. Conferences that are
held at the weekend might not be feasible for many women to attend
and present at, if they have family care duties, even if it might be assumed
that their partner will be able to pick up child care responsibilities.
From a neoliberal perspective, the venue itself can be seen as a com-
modity. Conferences have the opportunity to reect on and promote the
culture and history of the host venue, which has been done on occasions
by some conferences. There was no evidence from my study to conrm or
not, but it might be that academics are more inclined to attend confer-
ences in more appealing locales.
CLOSING KEYNOTE 61
THE DELEGATE AT THE CONFERENCE

The examples in this book highlight how conference impact need not
rest on a paradigm-dening plinth. The impact is often at a personal level.
For some it will be networking. For others, a particular presentation.
Sometimes the impact is not immediate, but only occurs months later
when something is read and related to what was said at the conference,
producing a light-bulb moment for the academic. Such a phenomenon
might present a challenge to dening, and with ones neoliberal hat on
again, measuring the worth of a conference.
Conferences might not always be a good place for the meaningful
exchange of ideas and knowledge. Many of the respondents were critical
of keynote presentations, preferring small group discussions. Much has
been made of the idea of conferences generating noise, but this has a literal
sense as well. Conferences can be noisy venues, and so for a person with
hearing problems or attention difculties, they might nd it a challenge,
when speaking one-to-one in a crowded environment for example.
My own personal reection on my inability to articulate an idea because
I did not have the necessary language at hand to convey my thoughts
at the time again highlights the problems individuals might have in
communicating.
Respondents spoke about communication and socialisation. Socialising
is an inevitability of an academic conference. It would be wrong to expect
that socialising comes naturally to everyone, and so some people are at an
advantage at the conference. Furthermore, there is the challenge when an
individual encounters a conference clique that is hard to penetrate.
Socialisation is not just about interacting at a conference. The more
common aspect of socialisation is where the academic learns the explicit
and subtler aspects of the discipline they work in. An expectation will be
that every academic by virtue of working in a certain research eld, will
develop the professional values and attitudes of the discipline they work in,
by acceptance of the host paradigm. Conferences at least in theory provide
a chance for junior academics to acquire professional customs, values and
attitudes.
If we borrow from the Philosophy of Science, we might see conferences
as structuring socialisation in one of two ways; for academics to belong to
a particular paradigm (a la Kuhn); or a place for academics seeking the
freedom to challenge (a la Popper). If an individual does not accept the
assumptions of the paradigm, there tends to be little opportunity at
conferences to challenge the prevailing ideology, as conferences by their

nature tend to draw like-minded people.
One of the supposed benets of working in the academy is that one can
enjoy Academic Freedom; be that a freedom of enquiry, or teaching.
This might be more commonly perceived by laypeople as speaking ones
mind, albeit with a hope that the opinions are based on evidence and/or
reason. However, Williams (2016) has voiced her concerns about aca-
demic freedom in an age where it might seem that people at universities
are more inclined to conform. Conferences are not places where an aca-
demic can speak freely, because of the like-mindedness of the delegates,
through the acceptance of the paradigm.
This can be seen to chime with my analysis in Case Study Five, of a
presentation where a particular slide I showed was met with some aversion.
My interpretation of this was that, in general, conferences might not be a
place to make controversial or political statement, in this case by chance.
This might be seen to t well with Williams argument. What my example
adds is that in general academics might be expected to self-censor because
of a need for maintaining a corporate identity, which could benet later
income generation.
Lastly, social media is more often a feature of a conference, in particular
through people Tweeting about conferences. Respondents noted this
has potential shortfalls; and a similar point was made by Groves (2016)
about conference attendees Tweeting unpublished results mentioned in
presentations.
CONFERENCE AS A NEOLIBERAL COMMODITY

The conference as a commodity is an indication of the neoliberal reach on
the academy. This is realised in different ways. Firstly, because knowledge
is a product that can arise from a conference, this event can be seen to have
a role in the knowledge enterprise industry, enabling sharing and discus-
sion of research ndings. Secondly, by promoting a method, data set or
research cause as a commodity, a conference goes beyond being an event
that has as a marketplace for books and other industry stalls, and becomes
the product and marketplace itself. In this scenario, there is perhaps no
place for Bembi (2016) luxury scholarly production in the form of open
debate and critique, which I consider is relevant to the third and fth case
studies. This is eschewed because not only is it abstract, but it could
jeopardise the overall goal of the larger academic picture, which more
CLOSING KEYNOTE 63
often than not will be to generate revenue. Slaughter and Leslie (1997), in
speaking about academic capitalism as an institution or market that seeks
to generate income, have echoed Chalmers argument that a conference is
a marketplace, and conrmed that conferences have a neoliberal function
through money making.
Income generation through grant funding is as much of an expectation
in the modern academy as journal article production. In this light, the
second case study is interesting because it documented how a conference
rejected industry funding, which had potential nancial implications. In
addition, because this conference had a focus on the specic conicts of
interest debate, it can be seen to have had a specic purpose and impact,
therefore going beyond mere noise generation.
The notion of luxury scholarly production might be seen to contradict
academic work, which aims to generate income. The conference in the rst
case study did not appear to produce a commodity, other than perhaps the
television programme. There are different reasons why this might have
been: the conference was held in a different era the mid-1980s, when
neoliberalism had not yet taken a hold of academia; or that it was based on
a discipline and tradition that did not naturally seek to address and resolve
real-life problems.
The series of conferences I attended in Case Study Four disconrm any
idea that a conference can either be of practical value or have theoretical
interest alone. These conferences could be seen to be promoting a com-
modity the expertise of a particular research method, therefore these
conferences had utility for the wider research environment, as well as the
attendees who could enrol in workshops to learn new ways of conducting
research. But they also had a strong theoretical interest, which was
reected in presentations and discussions around paradigms and paradigm
disputes.
Neoliberalism has as a tenet the notion of competition. The observation
by the Professor speaking at a keynote in the fourth case study about the
separate conferences highlighted not only a missed opportunity for colla-
boration, but also how competition between different conferences is not
necessarily helpful.
If too many like-minded people attend the same conference, differences
cannot be discussed and so there is no opportunity for change. A respon-
dent suggested, this might change if people attend conferences outwith
their own discipline. The conference in Case Study One sought to bring
together academics from different disciplines, but it was not as productive
as it could have been, because they did not interact in cross-disciplinary

debate. As noted by a respondent in the interview, this is the problem of
academics sticking to their own silos. At conferences, people from differ-
ent disciplines tend to erect barriers rather than build bridges, to clearer
communication.
It might be considered that the notion of conferences having an
impact is a reection of neoliberal thinking where everything has a cost
and a value. Parker and Weik (2014) suggested conferences value rests
in them being able to highlight new trends and directions for research,
framing the issues and alternatives for discussion, and holding sway
over the key people at the centre of the eld. Conferences might be
in a better position to have impact if they have an infrastructure in
place to make this achievable. The second case study highlighted how a
large Association can facilitate debate at and then take this beyond the
conference. The third case study showed how a conference provided a
possible framework for promoting a single issue in an effective and
efcient manner.
Value need not imply a costbenet analysis, but it might be impor-
tant to understand this better because conferences are not held without
purpose. The lack of research examining the impact of academic confer-
ences surprised me when I began writing this book. It might be that it is
difcult to tie down the concept, and that it is more easily measured a
telling word when a conference lies within the social sciences, or an even
more quantitative discipline. Perhaps it is better to ask how conferences
make a difference. The conict of interests debate at the conference in the
second case study was an example where a difference was made. By
holding the debate, the Association began a process whereby it eventually
rejected industry funding.
Conference posters have utility as a means for disseminating knowl-
edge, even though their popularity might be mixed among attendees.
An eye-catching poster might draw a lot of attention to ones research.
This will come at the expense of a lot of time and effort, something
academics tend not to have in great abundance. But this medium has
an income generation role that might be less evident, although no less
important. A conference can double or treble the number of presenta-
tions taking place without signicantly increasing running time if it
displays posters (usually concurrently). In this light, a poster can be a
means for a small conference to generate increased revenue from con-
ference registrations.
CLOSING KEYNOTE 65
REFLECTIONS
A limitation with the research reported in this book is that I did not examine
a representative sample of conferences or interviewees. This was inevitable
when trying to write about conferences in the social sciences, which as
I explained is a very wide discipline. The conferences that I have focused
on as case studies were bar one, events that I attended a decade or more ago;
and which cover a range from Health Services Research, to methods. That
said, I acknowledge that health research conferences are different from
humanities, social sciences or other discipline conferences. The case studies
only represent a sample of the variety available across the social sciences and
do not intend to stand for the whole.
Another limitation related to the above is that I hoped that the problem
of the lack of representativeness of the conferences would be less of an
issue by anonymising the conferences. It was hoped that this would give
them less of a parochial feel for the wide range of readers, many of whom
will have no connect to the discipline in which I worked. Instead, it may be
considered that by anonymising both the conferences and the respondents
that this made them too abstract.
I had permission to name most of the people who took part in the
interviews that fed into Plenary Session One, and so I could have named
them, but did not for the aforementioned reason. However, to avoid this
potential disconnect between anonymised conferences and named inter-
viewees, I could have sought permission from the conferences themselves
to name them in the session. This was not considered practical for a
number of reasons, for example, it was unclear if I made such a request,
would it have to go to one representative of the conference, or a panel, or
everyone who attended it.
The wider context in which we do research is something other authors
of Palgrave Pivot books have acknowledged. I can relate to Cristina
Archetti (2014) who likened her work to Guerrilla Research by gather-
ing ndings in under-researched areas using self-contained, no-cost
research. By following my own research agenda, I appreciate where Dave
Beer (2014) was coming from when he proposed the idea of the Punk
Sociologist. I would say that what I have produced could be seen as an
Indie EP: self-funded and produced in my garage (in point of fact bed-
room and then spare room). It was not impossible for me to conduct this
research as an Independent without an academic institution or funding;
but nor was it always straightforward.
Borrowing from the concept of committing an act of journalism

(Todd and Matthies 2013), which suggests that we can all be journalists
now, by capturing an event on phone camera and posting it on a social
media website as a record of a news event; I would say that this book is the
product of my having committed an act of research when I initially
documented the conferences. By this, I mean that I was unbeknownst
performing data generation when I wrote my observations and recollec-
tions about the conferences I attended.
CONCLUSION
Based on the work of this book, I propose the argument that academic
conferences are a (neoliberal) commodity; that is, they are something of
use/value, being bought and sold. There are three examples from this
book, which demonstrate this. Firstly, conferences are a commodity by
being a marketplace promoting an ideology/research tool/novel method,
which has an impact on the direction of research. Secondly, conferences
are commodities by being in competition with other conferences. And
thirdly, conferences are a commodity by reinforcing, explicitly or other-
wise, the tenet of the neoliberal academy.
Conferences in the social sciences are by-and-large a part of the meta-
story of their eld. They account for a particular way of doing research and
talking about knowledge, and therefore can be subject to empirical
research.
This book represents a beginning of a conversation; that is, a possible
new focus for research. This exploratory work has hinted at a range of
possible questions that could be examined. For anyone who is interested
in examining academic conferences, there is much to do. The evidence-
based community might want to examine questions relating to conference
utility and/or impact, which will be important for those tasked with
improving how conferences are organised.
There will be a need for a clear theoretical underpinning for such work.
I have set out one possibility, taking a neoliberal framework, but others
might be more appropriate, especially if it covers issues around the
delegate at the conference.
The academic conference as a subject of research might have a place in
the evolving research discipline of meta-research, which aims to evaluate
and improve research practices (Ioannidis et al. 2015). Such an introspec-
tive turn, it might be hoped, could be for the benet of the Academy.
Conference Abstract Book
Nicolson, Donald J. Academic conferences as neoliberal commodities.

Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Doi:
WELCOME
I have for long had a fascination with academic conferences, having fondly
documented each one that I attended. This session explains my passion for
conferences, and my particular method for documenting them. It situates
academic conferences within a historical context, and provides an overview
of academic conferences. It then examines the concept of the conference,
including variants.
Keywords: Historical overview; Conferences; Impact
OPENING KEYNOTE
This session constructs a framework for exploring academic conferences in
the Social Sciences in relation to travel, the delegate at the conference
(including aspects of communication and socialisation), and neoliberalism.
It then goes on to explain the aim and objectives of this book, the
methodology and methods.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-49190-5_6
Keywords: Travel; Socialisation; Communication; Neoliberalism;

Paradigm; Luxury scholarly product
PARALLEL SESSION ONE: CASE STUDIES

This session highlights how a conference that has a memorable presenta-
tion or stages an important debate/discussion, goes beyond producing
mere noise, and has impact. This gives it a value. By promoting an
ideology/research tool/novel method, a conference becomes a market-
place. These aspects of a conference bet the neoliberal tradition.
Keywords: Ideology; Utility; Conicts of Interests; Commodity;

Academic identity; Marketplace
PARALLEL SESSION TWO: INTERVIEWS

This session explains how the impact that a conference makes can be at a
paradigm or personal level. A conference might have a better chance of
having a real world impact when it has political support. Beyond this,
conferences have a marketplace function, which can reect the neoliberal
agenda.
Keywords: Travel; Culture; Communication; Dasein; Impact; Utility
CLOSING KEYNOTE
This session explains how the neoliberal agenda has relevance to confer-
ences, impacting on their accessibility, what might be permitted for debate
to maintain corporate identity, and their being a competitive rather than
co-operative edge. My work comes with a health warning, and suggests
three reasons why academic conferences might be considered a (neolib-
eral) commodity.
Keywords: Travel; Personal level; Academic freedom; Corporate identity;

Neoliberal commodity
THANK YOU KINDLY
It is customary for conferences to end with thanks to the admin staff who
brought it all together and made things run smoothly. The handing out of
owers is de rigueur. So these paragraphs should be considered oral
platitudes to the many people who have helped make this book possible
and bring this together.
Big thanks goes to Andrew James (formerly of Palgrave), who ran with
my proposal and commissioned it. Many thanks to Laura Aldridge for help
with het laatste loodjes, and my immense gratitude to Eleanor Christie
for being so patient with me, helpful and an excellent point of contact.
I am indebted to the anonymous reviewers for their comments and
advice that have signicantly improved on what I thought would be a
travelogue book.
This would have been a very much different and poorer book if I was
unable to interview people, and/or received information from them. I am
eternally grateful for giving me your valuable time so that I could talk with
you about conferences (which in many cases occurred a decade or more
ago), and/or requested information from you. You are: Abby Norman,
Anne-Marie Cunningham, Arthur Schafer, Aubrey Blumsohn, Burke
Johnson, David Healy, Debra Roter, Denis Walsh, Edwin van
Teijlingen, Frank Wells, Iain Chalmers, John Creswell, John Ioannidis,
Jon Deeks, Judith Mair, Julian Crane, Karsten Jrgensen, Lester Firkins,
Liz Wager, Margaret McCartney, Mark Hickson III, Meritxell Giros
Boixados, Nandi Siegfried, Nicholas Rowe, Nigel Fabb, Pam Kato, Pat

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-49190-5
70 THANK YOU KINDLY
Bazeley, Peter Gtzsche, Philip Satherley, Pratap Rughani, Ray

Moynihan, Stanley Fish, Tamica Garner, Tony Bruce, Trisha Elliott,
Vanessa H, Willy Maley and Wolf Langewitz. If there are any errors in
what is written in this book in relation to what people said to me, then that
fault lies solely with me. If I have forgotten anyone in the acknowledge-
ments, please forgive me and put it down to my scatty brain, which has
more holes than your average emmental.
I am indebted to previous line managers and others who supported me
to go to the conferences I attended. Without them doing so, this book and
my ideas around conferences would simply not exist. In particular, my
immense thanks go to James Mason for persuading me to present at an
international conference at a time when life was a little tricky; Peter Knapp
for enabling me to go to three international conferences; and Kate Jackson
who suggested a particular international conference. Thanks to the many
people in Dundee, not least Jeremy Wyatt, Frank Sullivan and Bruce
Guthrie, who enabled me to present at the same international conference
on another continent. I would never have collated my conference records
were it not for Heather Dickinson asking me to take notes to feedback
from my rst conference. I met many wonderful people at conferences and
shared some great nights on the tiles. Thank you.
This book represents a crossroads for my career. (Time will tell). I have
sought to reinvent myself as a writer, and in my attempt to do that I thank
Trisha Miller, the Brain Injury Society of Toronto and Gaby Soutar and
Alison Gray at the Glasgow Herald, for publishing my writings while I
wrote this book. A special thanks to Sierra William and Kieran Booluck for
posting parts of this book, on the LSE Impact Blog.
As ever, my love and gratitude to my family for everything up to this
point: my mother Catherine, and father Peter, Bro (Allan) and niece Holli.
And most of all, my love goes to my wife Donatella, and my admiration
to her mother, Liliana, who endures living with a writer who works from
home and understands little Italian. Senti la forza!
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INDEX
A E
Academic freedom, 62 Efciency, 49
Academic identity, 58
F
B
Funding, 12, 19, 25, 2627, 28, 29,
Barrier, 12, 14, 3739, 58, 60
63, 65
Blog, 70
Border Control, 40, 60
H
Health, 7, 28, 29, 31
C
Health Services, 7, 46, 54, 65
Commodication, 31, 42
Hemisphere, 7, 3839, 48
Commodity, 16, 29, 31, 55, 60,
Historical overview, 30
6264
Communication, 56, 12, 23, 42,
4548, 54, 61, 64
Conference(s), 1214, 4042, 5458, I
5964 Ideology, 15, 33, 34, 62, 66
Conicts of Interests, 24, 25, 26, 27, Impact, 5, 17, 38, 46, 49, 54, 55, 56,
28, 29 57, 58, 60, 61, 63, 64
Corporate identity, 34, 35, 62 Industry, 25, 26, 27, 28, 62
Culture, 4042, 52, 60
K
D Keynote, 8, 1120, 30, 32, 39, 43, 57,
Dasein, 54 5966
Delegate, 6, 8, 1214, 17, 18, 26, 38, Knowledge, 6, 13, 31, 35, 43, 46, 49,
41, 42, 5455, 61 52, 57, 60, 61, 62

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-49190-5
78 INDEX
L Professional development, 52, 60

Luxury scholarly product, 16, 62, 63 Purpose, 8, 31, 34, 43, 63, 64
M R
Marketplace, 16, 30, 31, 49, 53, 55, Research, 3, 5, 7, 8, 11, 1516, 17,
62, 63 18, 19, 2426, 2829, 30, 3132,
Method, 8, 18, 29, 30, 31, 62, 65 3435, 42, 45, 47, 50, 53, 5556,
Methodology, 1, 19, 31, 32, 34, 49 61, 62, 63, 64, 65
N
S
Neoliberal commodity, 6264, 66
Social media, 35, 4849, 62, 66
Neoliberalism, 8, 1418, 24, 29, 31,
Social science, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 16, 17,
37, 55, 63
18, 19, 21, 29, 32, 33, 64, 65, 66
Network, 48, 49, 51, 53, 56
Noise, 12, 29, 44, 50, 57, 61, 63
T
O Theoretical, 8, 11, 27, 29, 49, 63, 66
Online, 4, 5, 18, 48, 51 Theory, 3, 16, 43, 61
Travel, 2, 6, 8, 12, 14, 18, 3738,
3941, 55, 58, 5960
Twitter, 4849
P
Paradigm, 17, 47, 61, 62, 63
Paradigm Wars, 32
Parallel session, 6, 2135, 3758 U
Personal level, 56, 61 Utility, 17, 24, 31, 34, 49, 55, 63,
Political, 5, 14, 35, 57, 62 64, 66
Politics, 4, 14, 22
Poster, 6, 26, 43, 4951, 64
Presentation, 6, 8, 1213, 19, 26, W
30, 34, 4344, 47, 48, 52, 53, 57, Workshop, 1, 2, 6, 7, 24, 25, 28, 32,
62, 63 43, 47, 53, 60, 63

Academic Conferences As Neolibe - Donald J Nicolson

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Academic Conferences As Neolibe - Donald J Nicolson

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Academic Conferences as Neoliberal

ISBN 978-3-319-49189-9 ISBN 978-3-319-49190-5 (eBook)

The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

Cover illustration: Mono Circles John Rawsterne/patternhead.com

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

Parallel Session One: Case Studies 21

Parallel Session Two: Interviews 37

Room 5: The Delegate at the Conference 54

Conference Abstract Book 67

Thank You Kindly 69

Abstract I have for long had a fascination with academic conferences,

Keywords Historical overview Conferences Impact

The Author(s) 2017 1

was hosting a conference to provide support for NICE National

An overview of the academic conference in history will situate it in a

These can be considered examples of conferences that have been able to

In the United Kingdom, during the months of September and

Academic conventions dictate the need for clarity on the object of

we can then say that a conference is a formal meeting based on intellec-

If the conference is overseas, the application process can be demanding.

I have a fascination for writing about conferences. However, I am (of course)

Abstract This session constructs a framework for exploring academic

Keywords: Travel Socialisation Communication Neoliberalism

Henderson (2015) proposed that conferences are of relevant interest to

The Author(s) 2017 11

TRAVEL AND CONFERENCES

THE DELEGATE AT THE CONFERENCE

academic culture; and so it is argued that the presenters manner can be an

They recounted the experience of an attendee at a conference who felt

NEOLIBERALISM AND THE ACADEMY

Hibou (2015) proposed the concept of neoliberal bureaucratisation

and research. Nevertheless, it is not so clear if and how the neoliberal

academic market, and certainly at a conference. These goods, which can

The aim of this book is to explore academic conferences. It is primarily

1. To conduct an analysis of a set of conference case studies, to under-

Adopting a mixed methods design, this study is comprised of a retro-

and disseminated to colleagues; presenters publications arising from con-

participants the following questions: (1) In general, why do you go

Abstract This session highlights how a conference that has a memorable

Keywords Ideology Utility Conicts of interests Commodity

This session reports an analysis of a set of ve conference case studies. The

ROOM 11: CASE STUDY ONE

The Author(s) 2017 21

captured on lm, highlighted academics quest at a conference to master

By comparison, when I spoke with a Professor of the Humanities, he said

persecution of Christ, to which the philosopher held out his hands as if he

ROOM 15: CASE STUDY TWO

failed to report the ndings of a study because it showed no benet for

companies through funding. A representative of a pharmaceutical com-

Some conferences create rules on what is considered important to dissemi-

A consultation exercise was conducted after the conference among mem-

industry directly funding Association research, or to permit commercial

Many leading doctors are used to taking industry money . . . Currently, it is

Many debates at conferences tend to be theoretical in their scope, discuss-

The notion of the Association being seen as a reliable source of infor-

The challenge for academic medicine is not to eradicate them (conicts of

Psychiatry, who was not perturbed by conicts of interest because he does

ROOM 6: CASE STUDY THREE

A consequence of the widening neoliberal agenda in academia has been

My consideration is that the 2009 conference appeared to have a built in

ROOM 4: CASE STUDY FOUR

research. But an underlying signicance of this session only became evi-