Attending Academic Conferences

A while back in a post entitled “Today was a good day” I provided a list of academic conferences relevant to my research subject. Last week I registered for my first conference which will take place on the 25th January at Cardiff University. The conference is called Young Sexualities and the programme shows that there will be two talks which focus specifically on themes relating to the ongoing sexualisation debate.

Cardiff University ‘Young Sexualities’ Conference

The conference cost is £10 which I think is excellent and my train fare totalled £35. So all in, travel and attendance comes to under £50. I think this is quite reasonable and hope that future conferences will cost a similar amount. However, I’m not sure how realistic that is as I am hoping to attend a conference in Chester university on the 9th March which I have just discovered is £75 to attend! It is a 3 day event and Naomi Wolf is the keynote speaker. If you are interested please see the link below for further details. I plan to register for this event as soon as I have got the money together.

Chester University ‘Talking Bodies’ Conference

So the motivational message attached to this post is… if you are thinking about attending academic conferences, don’t put it off or find excuses not to go, register your place and book the train/coach. You won’t regret it!

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Today was a good day

Today has been a good day, I finished some things I’ve been working on and I feel like I am finally ready to settle into the routine of part time postgraduate research. I think after graduating it can take a while to get back into the swing of things if you go on to study at postgraduate level. I know it has taken me longer than I imagined and after I originally planned to enrol in September, I am now waiting until January because I feel like I didn’t start off on the right foot.

So after quite a long time completing nothing but doing a lot of random research related things to keep busy, I now feel ready to get stuck in and I plan to set myself a few goals over the weekend.

To end my day of achievement (well maybe not a day of “achievement” but I did complete a job application, send a proposal to my supervisor, produce a student advocate lesson plan and upload this post!) I am going to try and find some conferences I can attend and maybe even send work into. Here are some links to conferences I have looked at so far:

Talking Bodies: Identity, Sexuality and Representation

Body Projects Conference

FWSA Conference

Young Sexualities Postgraduate Conference

The F Word in Contemporary Women’s Writing

Sexuality in Theory & Practice