Why a Student Needs to Participate in ECPR General Conference
Deadline for application to ECPR Conference is in January, so it’s high time to think about submitting a project. Nora Kirkizh, research assistant at LINIS, told us about her trip to this conference and explained why students just have to participate in it.
In August 2015, I was lucky to take part in a conference organized by ECPR, one of the largest academic organizations in political science. In fact, I not only visited it, but also presented a LINIS research project co-authored with Olessia Koltsova.
Conference of impressions
The scale of the conference is impressive. The event programme was printed on 100 pages and is a real book including panels, sessions, researchers’ meetings, workshops, and, of course, book exhibitions. By the way, this year the conference took place not in Europe, as usual, but in North America, specifically in Montreal, Canada. And yes, HSE paid for a ticket to Canada, which is pretty unbelievable, since not all European universities, let alone Russian ones, can support such a long trip.
It seemed at first sight that the conference was extremely high-level, and a student project was unlikely to be accepted there. But this simply isn’t true. The ECPR considers each student application carefully and even offers grants for participation. The forum programme includes several networking meetings for master’s and doctoral students and discussions on the academic labour market.
What I liked about the conference was the variety of researchers and universities. I had a feeling that all the political scientists from Europe came to Montreal. After three days of the conference I understood how this community works and that Europe is not only Oxford and Cambridge.
And the most important thing, of course, is that such conferences help students understand where their work stands compared to West-European researchers. I believe that such things should be understood at the early stages of a researchers’ career.
Some advice on writing an abstract and application
The application includes an abstract of the project. At first, I looked at the examples of abstracts on the conference website and at the papers that were accepted last year in the session that was closest to my research interests. It’s important to remember that you’ll need to upload your paper on the ECPR website one week before the beginning of the conference.
It is also essential to show your abstract to your academic supervisor, who is most probably your co-author. I was lucky to have my academic supervisor, since she always was able to find time to help me with the abstract, although I was in another hemisphere at that time. If your supervisor has no time to give feedback via email, go straight to their office.
Ask for a grant for participation. Even though it will be paid only after the conference, it’s still worth it. EUR 250 is a nice amount. All the more so since the next ECPR conference will take place in Prague, which is much closer than Montreal.
