Presenting your research

The academic community meets in a variety of different fora: conferences; meetings; departmental seminars, etc. No two meetings are the same, but all have both formal and informal opportunities to communicate research, raise your profile and build your career.

The formal part of any academic forum usually takes the form of posters and oral presentations. Presenters will either be invited individually or solicited through a call for papers. The informal part of these academic fora usually happens over coffee, drinks, discussing the posters, business meetings and dinners. This is dealt with in more depth in the networking section of this website.

It is in your interest as a postgraduate researcher to try and find opportunities to present your research in appropriate places. You may find it useful to watch relevant websites and email lists to try and spot opportunities. Many conferences have reduced rates for postgraduate researchers and/or have a dedicated allocation of poster space/short presentations. When responding to calls for papers make sure that you tailor your abstract to the aims of the conference.

While you should be careful that attending lots of conferences does not distract you from your doctorate it is often possible to use one to support the other. For example, the preparation of papers may give you a meaningful deadline for the completion of a piece of research, analysis or writing.