Comments on: Broadening participation in the Academic Conference http://activehistory.ca/2009/12/broadening-participation-in-the-academic-conference/ History Matters Sun, 20 May 2012 10:43:49 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Dagomar Degroot http://activehistory.ca/2009/12/broadening-participation-in-the-academic-conference/comment-page-1/#comment-1277 Dagomar Degroot Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:43:53 +0000 http://activehistory.ca/?p=565#comment-1277 This is a really interesting post, especially for me as I'm helping to run York's conference this year. We've been trying to define how inclusive or exclusive our conference is meant to be: is this a graduate conference, in other words, designed to help young professionals interact, or is this a conference for anyone interested in history? Relatively "closed," ivory tower conferences benefit from, among other things, the mingling of those who speak the same academic discourse with roughly shared experiences, allowing for easier networking. However, history as a discipline and, beyond that, histories as constellations of ideas obviously benefit from many different perspectives. Professional historians also benefit from the questions posed by those with different backgrounds, and vice-versa. Increasingly we have trended towards opening our conference to a broader selection of participants, apparently reflecting, as you write, a broader shift in historical conferences. This year we'll have papers from undergraduates, from students in other disciplines, and even some from those outside of academia altogether. This is a really interesting post, especially for me as I’m helping to run York’s conference this year. We’ve been trying to define how inclusive or exclusive our conference is meant to be: is this a graduate conference, in other words, designed to help young professionals interact, or is this a conference for anyone interested in history? Relatively “closed,” ivory tower conferences benefit from, among other things, the mingling of those who speak the same academic discourse with roughly shared experiences, allowing for easier networking. However, history as a discipline and, beyond that, histories as constellations of ideas obviously benefit from many different perspectives. Professional historians also benefit from the questions posed by those with different backgrounds, and vice-versa.

Increasingly we have trended towards opening our conference to a broader selection of participants, apparently reflecting, as you write, a broader shift in historical conferences. This year we’ll have papers from undergraduates, from students in other disciplines, and even some from those outside of academia altogether.

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