Pass the Mic: Relocating the Centre of the Conference Presentation

By Joanna Nissel and Josip Martincic

The three of us - Joanna, Josip, and Lawrence - met at an SWW DTP Away Day, during an icebreaker activity. Given the interaction was a manufactured one between strangers, you might expect well-intentioned though stilted conversation. But we could not stop talking. It quickly became clear that despite our different disciplines (contemporary poetry education, theatre criticism, and archaeology), all of us, in our work, seek to relocate the centre of power, recognising hidden and marginalised voices and experiences. We continued that discussion in a session at the SWW DTP Summer Research Festival 2022.

The usual method of delivery in academic conferences is to hold court at the podium, a narrative flowing outwards to the audience until they are sanctioned to speak at the end. This classic presentation has limitations due to its constraints, as it ‘forces presenters to conform to a uniform methodology’. [1] Given that the session focused on giving more authorial power to a wider range of voices, it felt inappropriate for just our narratives to be presented. Therefore, we sought an approach that acknowledged the collective experiences and wisdom in the room. Our initial instinct was to turn to queer theory, as texts like Queer Ecology by Timothy Morton reject conventional power structures, inspiring ideas for alternative modes of delivery. [2] Firstly, though, we needed to establish what makes conferences appealing.

Academic conferences offer a wealth of potential benefits, including ‘personal/professional development and education’. [3] At their best, they ‘allow attendees to establish contacts and build networks that may continue long after the conference is completed.’ [4] However, Poade and Young raise that, while ‘conferences are a key site of academic practice’, they also serve to reproduce ‘hierarchies, boundaries and barriers’. [5] In light of this perpetuation, Poade and Young call for a rethinking of the conference format, adopting Carpenter and Linton’s conceptualisation of the ‘“unconference” – “voluntary, informal learning experiences that reject traditional conference structures”, avoiding top-down organisation, using different facilitation styles, and being more participant-led.’ [6] 

We liked the sound of an unconference. Drawing from Joanna’s research in writing education, we noted that our session could follow the more informal group model of a workshop, the dominant format of creative generation in HE Creative Writing. [7] However, the workshop model has likewise recently been denounced for perpetuating inequalities since it can imbue the facilitator with too much power. [8] Our session would instead follow the more egalitarian model of the collective. [9] This format has recently seen great success. For instance, the London-based collective Malika’s Poetry Kitchen first began to provide support to underrepresented writers who were not being adequately served. Two members have now won the T. S. Eliot Prize through the support offered via the collective. [10] Subsequently, we decided we needed to collapse the hierarchical structure and invite others to speak on equal footing with ourselves.

The resulting session was joyfully anarchic. The three of us sat in the centre of the auditorium at the University of Exeter and passed a microphone between us while we introduced our research and the concept of the session. The microphone then became a baton, passed between the community of students gathered for the conference. Josip facilitated the conversation, acting as the compère, a point to which the microphone could return so the discussion could be consolidated, and new questions posed in response. It is important to note that the session simultaneously took place online. To enable online participants to have an equal involvement in the experience, we used our laptops as tracking cameras, allowing everyone to see our and other speakers’ facial expressions. Online participants were also able to raise their hands and speak verbally or via the chat.

Participants responded well, commenting how ‘the format and positioning of the talk seemed to boost spontaneity and inspire confidence in others to contribute to the discussion.’ We were also given the award for ‘Most Entertaining’ session of the festival, which was voted for by the attendees.

Top Tips to Run Your Own Unconference Session

1. Collaboration is Key 

The phrase itself is perhaps a tired one, so let us re-evaluate it to emphasise the importance of choosing the right collaborators. Despite our different knowledge bases, the three of us each had strengths that worked well together. They can be summarised as: instigate, deepen, and consolidate. Joanna suggested the session concept and orchestrated our deadlines. Lawrence deepened the dialogue, drawing parallels that unearthed insights from the collective discussion. Josip worked on a macro-scale to find the commonalities linking us all. Think about what key actions need to take place for your event and make sure someone is covering them.

2. Preparation and Discomfort 

Analyse how you would normally prepare for a presentation. Do you use a full script? Bullet points? Broad concepts to cover at some stage? The unconference session offers the opportunity to re-evaluate your methods and try something new. Some of our team, for instance, intentionally went without a script in order to build public-speaking skills, safe in the knowledge that - unlike a solo conference presentation - others could pick up any dropped threads. You may also experience discomfort through your team members using different preparatory techniques to you. As you will likely be part of panel discussions in the future, embrace this valuable practice.

3. The Importance of Play 

Artistic and practical research has long emphasised the importance of play to creative development. We argue that the same is true for academic conferences. Through the informal and playful setting, the conversation flowed more easily. We noticed our own anxieties reduced, and contributing participants were likewise relaxed. It reminded us of the ideal PhD progression review: opportunities to assess development, share ideas, and explore potentialities for future growth. The unconference’s egalitarian approach, therefore, represents a move away from exam-oriented learning, in which everything must be perfect, to a more realistic learning experience: messy and imperfect. In doing so, further insights can be generated.

Reflecting on the experience of the session leads to broader questions about the nature of knowledge, societal power, and our role as researchers. We realise that we do not have all the answers, nor do we need to. With the relocation of the centre of the conference presentation, we provide the space to ask the questions and pass the mic.

Joanna Nissel and Josip Martincic

University of Southampton and University of Exeter

Joanna is currently completing a PhD at the University of Southampton in Poetry Mentorship, funded by the SWW DTP in association with the writer-development agency, ArtfulScribe. She was recently invited to join the advisory committee for the Quality Assurance Agency’s national benchmark for the teaching of Creative Writing in universities.

Josip is an AHRC-funded PhD student researching theatre reviews in Late-Victorian London at the University of Exeter. He achieved a 1st class BA undergraduate degree in English and Drama from Royal Holloway, University of London in 2018. Following this, he started an MbyRes programme at the University of Exeter in September 2018 from which I withdrew to accept an unconditional offer for the PhD programme in September 2019.

References:

[1]  Aarabi, Parham, The Art of Lecturing: A Practical Guide to Successful University Lectures and Business Presentations, 1st edn (Cambridge University Press, 2007) , pp.131–147<https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511816567>

[2]  Morton, Timothy, ‘Queer Ecology’, PMLA, 125.2 (2010), 273–82 <https://www.jstor.org/stable/25704424> [accessed 8 March 2022]

[3]  Mair, Judith, and Elspeth Frew, ‘Academic Conferences: A Female Duo-Ethnography’, Current Issues in Tourism, 21.18 (2018), 2152–72 <https://doi.org/10.1080/13683500.2016.1248909>

[4]  Mair and Frew, p. 2153.

[5] Carpenter, Jeffrey Paul, and Jayme Nixon Linton, ‘Educators’ Perspectives on the Impact of Edcamp Unconference Professional Learning’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 73 (2018), 56–69 <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2018.03.014> cited in Donna Maria Poade and Craig Young, ‘Introducing a Conscious Approach into Academic Practice: Breaking Boundaries in the Conference Space’, Emotion, Space and Society, 42 (2022), 100862 (p. 1) <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2021.100862>.

[6]  Poade and Young, p. 2.

[7]  Jaillant, Lise, Literary Rebels: A History of Creative Writers in Anglo-American Universities, 1st edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022) <https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192855305.003.0001>, pp. 2–9.

[8]  Jaillant, p. 8.

[9]  Ritter, Kelly, ‘Ethos Interrupted: Diffusing “Star” Pedagogy in Creative Writing Programs’, College English, 69.3 (2007), 283–92 <http://www.jstor.org/stable/25472210> [accessed 1 February 2023]; Sieja-Skrzypulec, Hanna, ‘Teacher Lore and Pedagogy in Creative Writing Courses in Poland’, in The Place and the Writer: International Intersections of Teacher Lore and Creative Writing Pedagogy (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), pp. 143–58 <http://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/the-place-and-the-writer-international-intersections-of-teacher-lore-and-creative-writing-pedagogy> [accessed 15 November 2021].

[10]  Dastidar, Rishi, and Maisie Lawrence, eds., Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different: Poems from Malika’s Poetry Kitchen (London: Corsair, 2021).