Medical and Scientific Conferences as Sites of Sociological Interest: A Review of the Field

González-Santos, Sandra P.; Dimond, Rebecca

doi:10.1111/soc4.12250

Cited by 19 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 32 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Academic conferences are not new topics of inquiry ( Merritt and Hanson 1989 ; Kyvik and Larsen 1994 ; Söderqvist and Silverstein 1994 ; González-Santos and Dimond 2014 ; Nicolson 2017 ). One stream of research focuses on the role of conferences in the process of academic socialization of young scholars ( Chapman et al.…”

Section: Research On Academic Conferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

What are the social and scientific benefits of participating at academic conferences? Insights from a survey among doctoral students and postdocs in Germany

Hauss

2020

Research Evaluation

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Academic conferences are global phenomena. As the coronavirus pandemic continues, many conferences now are being postponed or canceled. Usually, they bring together a complex network of academic and nonacademic professionals to discuss and disseminate new knowledge. The practice of ‘conferencing’ also includes activities that go far beyond the exchange of information. Conferences constitute social spaces where researchers encounter other researchers, establish new contacts, maintain old contacts, hold exploratory talks, and initiate collaborations. Academic conferences therefore can yield a plenitude of scientific and societal impacts. In the past, much progress has been made in measuring the impact of financial investments in science. There is, however, no shared understanding of how to measure the impact of academic conferences. Against the background of the time and money that is spent on both visiting and organizing conferences, it is important to understand the ways in which conferences generate impact. The coronavirus pandemic also shows that it is important to implement digital technologies like tools for virtual conferencing. This article uses qualitative and quantitative data to examine the conference activities of young scholars from German universities and to study how they profit from attending conferences. It is shown that conferences play a significant role in the qualification process. However, in terms of information and networking benefits, postdocs compared with doctoral students seem to profit more.

show abstract

Section: Research On Academic Conferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

What are the social and scientific benefits of participating at academic conferences? Insights from a survey among doctoral students and postdocs in Germany

Hauss

2020

Research Evaluation

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Conferences are a key set of encounters in which scientific fields come together to interact, yet they remain under-analysed in STS ( González-Santos and Dimond, 2015 ; Supper, 2015 ). Claims and counter-claims are made, bonds are confirmed or broken, and new ideas are presented as part of the pathway to rendering them legitimate and knowable.…”

Section: Conferences As Performative Sitesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Doing laboratory ethnography: reflections on method in scientific workplaces

Stephens

Lewis

2017

Qualitative Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Laboratory ethnography extended the social scientist’s gaze into the day-to-day accomplishment of scientific practice. Here we reflect upon our own ethnographies of biomedical scientific workspaces to provoke methodological discussion on the doing of laboratory ethnography. What we provide is less a ‘how to’ guide and more a commentary on what to look for and what to look at. We draw upon our empirical research with stem cell laboratories and animal houses, teams producing robotic surgical tools, musicians sonifying data science, a psychiatric genetics laboratory, and scientists developing laboratory grown meat. We use these cases to example a set of potential ethnographic themes worthy of pursuit: science epistemics and the extended laboratory, the interaction order of scientific work, sensory realms and the rending of science as sensible, conferences as performative sites, and the spaces, places and temporalities of scientific work.

show abstract

“…While conferences are thus often referred to, they rarely feature as main site or subject of science studies. This is surprising as scholars have repeatedly pointed out 3 their significance and simultaneous neglect (Söderqvist and Silverstein 1994;Vessuri and Canino 2002;González-Santos and Dimond 2015;Hauss 2018;Trøst Hansen and Budtz Pedersen 2018). During the pandemic, conferences appeared more often as topics of articles reflecting on how to make them more sustainable and inclusive in future (Remmel 2021;Sarabipour et al 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Researching conferences as spaces of valuation: a pragmatic approach

Koch¹

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Scientific conferences are not only sites of knowledge exchange and networking. They are also spaces of valuation that are constitutive of epistemic cultures. At conferences, scholars (re-) negotiate what counts as good research, what kind of scholarship is considered valuable and which epistemic properties matter for their field. This negotiation sometimes happens explicitly, but more often through evaluative acts: statements of reasoning and justification, questions and remarks, and evaluative emotional utterances that include literal and figurative expressions of appreciation, scepticism, rejection, etc. Combining conference ethnography with a pragmatic approach borrowing insights from linguistics offers a way to identify and interpret such evaluative acts in conference talk. An analysis of data from the 3rd International Forest Policy Meeting (IFPM3), a virtual event with participants from across the globe, serves as illustrative case. Text materials generated through observing participation (field notes, transcripts, chat comments and abstracts) show how forest policy researchers ascribe worth to studies characterised by methodical rigour and praxis orientation, and guided by an objectivistic ideal of science. However, the latter was also challenged by panelists who enthusiatically appraised reflexive research that acknowledged the role of emotions in knowledge production.The IFPM3 case shows that conferences offer a unique space for observing academic valuation practice. Exploring how scholars enact values through conference discourse will not only help to better understand the specificities of particular research fields and their epistemic cultures. It can also more generally enhance the understanding of how social and epistemic levels in science intersect.

show abstract

Medical and Scientific Conferences as Sites of Sociological Interest: A Review of the Field

Cited by 19 publications

References 32 publications

What are the social and scientific benefits of participating at academic conferences? Insights from a survey among doctoral students and postdocs in Germany

What are the social and scientific benefits of participating at academic conferences? Insights from a survey among doctoral students and postdocs in Germany

Doing laboratory ethnography: reflections on method in scientific workplaces

Researching conferences as spaces of valuation: a pragmatic approach

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About