1St Annual Crawford Phd Student Conference

1st Annual Crawford PhD student Conference

Summary of key points received from PhD student

Goals/objectives of the conference

 Getting all PhD students to know each others more  An opportunity for faculty members to learn more about PhD student areas and vice versa  Use this conference as practice arena for presenting thesis at formal conferences

Scope of the conference  Thematic areas  Topic by regions  Main theme by research method and sub-theme  Disciplinary lines

Structure  Plenary session at lunch? or social lunch only?  Depending on the theme, special speakers on a broad topic may be good  BBQ or drinks to wrap up the conference (families member of PhD students may be invited)  Chaired by PhD students and/or academic staff  There should be panelists (PhD students) for each sessions.

Others  Request for abstracts and then see how to move from here  There should be different committees to look at different things such as logistic team, food and beverage, conference content, documentation, ect….. Tentative Agenda for the Conference

Time Agenda items Notes Morning Session

Afternoon Session

Conference wrap up and Reception Organization chart Work Plan

Detailed outputs for Tasks and activities Responsible parties Timeline 24th conference November September October Novemer W1 W2 W3 W4 W5 W6 W7 W8 W9 W10 W11 Logistic 1 – General – registry, Q&A focus point, email contact…. , etc……

Logistic 2 – Food, beverage and on the day general logistic etc….

Conference content

Documentation

Public relations - public awareness, coordinate with school and others, speak persons… etc….

Actual comments received.

Goals/objectives of the conference:

- to provide an opportunity for faculty and PhD students to get to know eachother. I suppose it is also an opportunity for faculty to get an idea of the students study areas. And this would be really nice for students to know which of the faculty members are interested in similar topics.

2. Scope of the conference – Do you reckon it’s a good idea if we can have a list of all Crawford PhD students with some information on their thesis? This may be good for information booklet during the conference I think

- I think this is a good idea. I also liked the idea that floated in the last meeting of basing the topics into thematic areas. Or even topic by regions (e.g. Australia, Asia-Pacific, East Asia, Europe, etc.) if themes are too broad and spread out.

3. Structure of the conference – So far, we know that Tom will give opening remark and then Yusaku follows – three simultaneous sessions.

- No particular comment, except that we might need an open area like a reception area where people can ask questions about the proceedings and such.

……………. 1. Goals/objectives of the conference:

- to provide an opportunity for faculty and PhD students to get to know eachother. I suppose it is also an opportunity for faculty to get an idea of the students study areas. And this would be really nice for students to know which of the faculty members are interested in similar topics.  agree with all this. Also good as practice for presenting at/attending conferences

2. Scope of the conference – Do you reckon it’s a good idea if we can have a list of all Crawford PhD students with some information on their thesis? This may be good for information booklet during the conference I think

- I think this is a good idea. I also liked the idea that floated in the last meeting of basing the topics into thematic areas. Or even topic by regions (e.g. Australia, Asia-Pacific, East Asia, Europe, etc.) if themes are too broad and spread out.  I’m going to steal Yu Wei’s idea here (sorry Yu Wei!)… perhaps another option is to group things by (or at least have one group devoted to) methods, as this is something that spans all disciplines/topic areas.

3. Structure of the conference – So far, we know that Tom will give opening remark and then Yusaku follows – three simultaneous sessions.

- No particular comment, except that we might need an open area like a reception area where people can ask questions about the proceedings and such.  Sounds like a good idea. Yusaku seems to want a plenary session at lunch but personally I think it’s better if lunch is a more relaxed social thing (like at the PhD Day earlier in the year).

…………….. agree with Lhawang and John’s comments.

My only additional thought is re the thematic/topic area point. I’m really not sure how this will work without seeing a list of people’s topics/abstracts. I think we could either suggest some and then be prepared to change/amend once we have abstracts. OR just wait for abstracts. The other alternatives - divide people along disciplinary lines, country or methodological approaches -seem to reflect the same limitations that Yusaku was against with the disciplinary approach. I.e economists aren’t going to be doing namby pamby interpretivist crap like John, Yu Wei and I 

Anyway, I guess, given that everyone has to present, and everyone has to use their thesis, I reckon we should wait for the abstracts (due mid Sept?) and then decide. But I’m more than happy to be overruled. …………………

Agree with Lhwang, John and Jack have Here are some of my comments: 1) Could we have an overall conference theme that can be broken down into sub-themes? Although Yusaku would like different streams of students attending the sessions, this can prove quite difficult given how different our research interests are. As Jack already suggested, we could maybe have a main theme on methods and sub-theme could be the different type so methods. Or we could have a main theme on “World Peace” (kidding!!!)…and divide according to geographical regions or something along those lines as Lhwang suggested. But may be good to have an idea of what everyone’s research topic is so that we can look for common themes. Would Robyn be able to give us the list of students (2nd years and beyond) and their research topic? 2) For the plenary lunch session, it also depends on what the overall conference theme is…then we can invite suitable speaker to speak on a broad topic. But like John, would prefer it to be more informal in the format so that everyone can relax somewhat. 3) For the post-conference social activity, I thought we could be family-friendly by inviting PhD students’ spouses and/or children along  Or we can have a BBQ?

………………… I agree with most of the ideas raised, particularly those from Yu Wei regarding creating an informal atmosphere for both the lunch session and the after event activities.

Given that the conference is for first year students, I think the main focus could be:

 getting people to know each other, including primarily their research interests, their academic and cultural background, etc – this will be useful in the future for organizing seminars, forming research/study or social activity groups  familiarizing students with resources available to them at Crawford, including staff and facilities - this is important as most students at this stage are yet to finalise their supervisory penal. It will also be worthwhile to invite staff and senior student representatives to give talks on their research areas, what has been happening in those areas and what potential opportunities will be available to new PhD students, etc

………….. I agree with John and Yu Wei. I think the picture would be much more detailed when we bring those ideas to the meeting with Yusaku and Robyn.