Attending conferences can be a hugely constructive way to sharpen your research, grow your network, exchange new ideas, and hone your presentation skills. Nevertheless, presenting a paper can be a daunting task, especially the first time!
Through open conversation, our Conferencing 101 event aimed to demystify some of the daunting aspects of presenting your research to an audience. As such, the extracts below collate the altruistic advice and experiences of four PhD candidates, covering five topics: the Q&A section; conference etiquette; maximising your 20-minute presentation; delivering your paper; and minimising nerves. The four speakers are: Anika Babel (University College Dublin); Adam Behan (University of Cambridge); Hannah Millington (Dublin City University); and Conor Power (Maynooth University).
The following is specifically tailored towards online conferences, like the upcoming Society for Musicology in Ireland and the Irish Chapter of International Council for Traditional Postgraduate Conference.
On the Q&A Section
Conor Power: One of the things I always fear about questions is if I've no idea what they're talking about, or if I have no idea what their angle is; that I’ve never even thought of this before!?
Adam Behan: There is this unpredictable element to the questions. Like, who is there, what will they be asking, and what do I do if I don't know the answer to the question?
Conor: After a couple of conferences, I’ve learned to appreciate this uncertainty. If someone highlights something you've never considered, that's actually a good thing because they've given you this new angle.
Anika Babel: It's perfectly fine not to know it all. We're all students! We're all learning and this is the reason we're pursuing this life: we don't know everything and we're continually striving to know more.
Adam: Let’s assume you’ve found yourself in an absolute worst-case scenario where you’ve really been put on the spot: you can always defer what’s being asked. You can say ‘I would love to talk to you about this more, let’s talk/email about this afterwards.’ That’s absolutely fine.
Hannah Millington: On the back of that, if you get a question that you don't know how to answer, it's always nice to have a pen and paper on your desk—even if you’re presenting at a virtual conference. That way you can say ‘Oh, that's a really great question and I hadn't thought about that, but I'm going to write it down.’ This recognition of the fact that somebody has bothered to ask you a question is a nice thing; they're interested in you! So it’s good to give your thanks and to write the question down to show that you're taking it on board—even if you think it might be a terrible question!
Conor: Even if you're not able to answer their question, you can simply thank them. There’s no pressure to answer straight away. You can say ‘Oh I've never considered that angle before, thank you so much for expressing it that way!’ I can think about the question later on and get back to them.
Adam: So, in a sense, there is always a way to answer the question!
Conor: Just try to articulate your ‘lack-of-understanding' and reframe it in a positive way, because there's nothing bad about that. The whole reason we go to conferences is to learn from each other and to learn something about your own research from these questions.
Anika: One of my biggest hangups was that I shouldn’t let on that I don't know every detail about my supposed area of expertise. Don't be afraid to say that you don't know the answer.
Adam: And I think it's important to remember that people are not there to catch you out. People have attended your paper because they want to hear you speak and they're interested in what you're saying.
Hannah: And many of the people listening to your paper are probably not the experts on your topic. You might get an expert in your session, in which case they'll probably just admire the fact that you're doing this research! You are the one who knows exactly what you're talking about, and you know where your gaps are. Also, you can't preempt all the questions that you’ll be asked—you'll tie yourself in a knot trying to preempt all the questions that you can't know that they're going to ask! So go in as relaxed as you possibly can, remembering that you are an expert in the thing that you're talking about. Even though questions are a source of dread and panic for a lot of people, try to enjoy them; to settle into them. You’ve done your paper, so now you can simply communicate with people. It’s a two-way thing.
Adam: In the virtual conference world, the 10 minutes of questions is actually the best time for actual human contact. I see it as a good thing—not scary. It's a chance to actually talk to people, which is a nice thing!
Hannah: When you’re delivering your paper, you're in full academic mode. Then you come into the questions and there is a degree of informality there. I'm not saying go completely informal, but you can relax a little bit and think ‘Okay, now I'm just talking to people and sharing knowledge and expertise.’
Adam: It’s a really good opportunity for you to express yourself in a way that's very different to giving the paper. People can see what you are like and how enthusiastic you are about your topic. The Q&A is a really good opportunity to showcase the best version of yourself, I suppose. In the online world, it's probably even more important because you don't have the same chances to talk to people during the ‘in-between moments’ people usually get to know each other. I'm a person who would be quite nervous about asking questions generally, but because of the fact that socialising options are fewer at online conferences, it's a really good time to try to push yourself to ask a question, even if it's just to say ‘Your paper really resonated with me’ in whichever ways.
Conor: And it's nice to ask people in your panel questions too—which shows that you're there and you're listening. If you can't think of a question, you can send a message saying ‘That was a wonderful paper.’ Just as a courtesy.
Anika: Those little comments can make a world of difference! Collectively, the advice so far seems to sum up to ‘a frame of mind’; your approach to the Q&A section. Don't fret, which is much easier said than done for me! At my first big conference, I confessed to a professor that I was freaking out about the questions. They shared a helpful parable along these lines: ‘So we've all been to seminars or conferences where someone asks a really long question in which they basically tell you all about their own research, and you're trying to pay attention to find where the question may be, but you don't know what they're actually asking and there's panic, panic, panic!’ And the professor’s quip was: ‘Could you repeat that, please?’ I thought that was such a brilliant way to diffuse the tension! And the moral of the story was: ‘Don't you forget, you are the one with all the power.’ During the Q&A, you have all the power and you can simply refuse to answer a question—which I have seen done, but it must be done very politely. Like Conor and Adam were saying, you can initiate or even continue a conversation later on—either in person or via email.
On Conference Etiquette
Conor: It's important to get to know people in your session. You'll probably be invited into your session maybe 10 or 15 minutes before the panel is scheduled to start. You can take this opportunity to test out your tech, but it's equally important to greet the other people you're presenting with and the session chair. That way if you didn’t know anyone in your ‘Zoom room’ (or even in person), you’ll now have this little rapport with the chair and your fellow panellists. The fact that you know these people just ever so slightly makes things a tiny bit less daunting. You’re not in a room full of complete strangers now.
Anika: Definitely! Chat away for those few minutes to distract yourself and put each other at ease—especially because we’re all likely to be feeling a bit anxious.
Hannah: One of the things I would say about etiquette is that the virtual realm is quite nice in breaking down some of the academic hierarchy. I’ve experienced at some conferences—not in Ireland, but further afield—a kind of ‘us-and-them’ atmosphere; a student body and established academics. Often, established academics meet up with their buds, and we do the same. But I think there's something quite nice about us all being in this virtual room and not having the opportunity to form ‘hierarchical cliques’, for want of a better phrase. I'm not saying these are intentional or unkind or anything, but they can creep in. And if a Professor sends you a message and you're like ‘They're really established and they just sent me just sent me a message saying they liked my paper! Should I reply, shall I overthink it for 20 minutes and then reply? And then the session finishes!’ Just be yourself. There can be that nice engagement with established scholars—maybe people that you've seen from a distance, who you admire. You know, they're still human beings at the end of the day! And they've come to see your paper or your session, so they're very likely to be interested. So just be brave and human!
Adam: Adding to what Hannah was saying about the ‘us-and-them’ thing and how these distinctions can be broken down, I think a great thing is to simply not forget to smile every now and then, or even to laugh—just to kind of break some of the tension that can possibly be in the room. Obviously, this is not always appropriate. Musicology is serious and people talk about serious things. That's rightfully the case and shouldn't necessarily be lightened. But in some cases, it can very well be lightened and can even make everything move more nicely and really engage people.
Anika: I don't think a touch of humour goes astray. Although, like you were saying, it really does have to be appropriate and it also depends on your topic. But if I script a joke, no one laughs!
Conor: I transcribe any side comments (or even jokes) as ‘semi-scripted’. I write them in pen in the margins, so that I can include them if I want to, but I don't have to. If it’s handwritten or in a different style, I approach it differently when reading. I’m not trying to be funny; like, I won’t do knock-knock jokes or anything! I just think adding a bit of levity can help—it also helps maintain interest and breaks the monotony.
Anika: Yeah, that distinction is important: it’s not so much about adding jokes, but some levity!
On Maximising a 20-Minute Paper
Adam: There’s no single way to do a conference paper. The way I think about structuring papers is to move from the general to the particular—especially when you're speaking at generalist conferences. Even if you’re at a specialist conference or if your listenership is informed in some way, that tip is always good to bear that in mind because you're opening this whole field or this whole world to people.
Hannah: Another thing is to think about the content in terms of how much you want to actually do in 20 minutes, because once you've done your introduction and what not, you don’t actually have the full 20 minutes to discuss the topic.
Conor: I always do a dry run. It's just handy to see how long it takes you to read through. If it's 21 minutes, that's not the end of the world. If it's 25 minutes, maybe something has to go because you're cutting into your own question time and you're also impacting people, later on. You wouldn’t like it if it was done to you, so best not do it to somebody else.
Adam: You will often have much more written that you need to say, and this is a really strong position to work from. Take a strand or two—something that you find especially interesting or compelling, or that’s really fascinating to you.
Hannah: Sometimes you have to go back and think ‘Well it's really interesting, but I just can't fit it in.’ What you can do at that point is highlight to the audience the fact that you couldn't go into as much detail about this particular aspect.
Anika: It can really pain me to leave stuff out of presentations when I've spent a lot of effort and time on material that I’d like to show off. But sometimes we can conflate presenting such work with things that are maybe beyond what’s needed to get your point across. You don’t need to labour over the nuances or on the technicalities to get your core idea across. A neat version of the working definition is often more than enough. This can help invite the audience into your research for them to then share new perspectives with you.
Hannah: Perhaps a specific area is beyond the scope of your paper, but you can say that you’d be very happy to talk about it in the questions. Then whoever's got their pen and paper at the ready might be like ‘Oh great! I can ask a question about that later!’ That approach can help focus what you're doing and this can be traced back to the abstract as well. Abstracts that promise to cover, for example 150 years of music in 20 minutes are less likely to be accepted. The people reviewing it might think ‘That's quite ambitious, how are they going to do that in 20 minutes? By accepting this abstract, are we going to set them up to fail?’ So that is something to bear in mind.
Anika: I heard a great tip recently that seems kind of counterintuitive. But when faced with this challenge of presenting your research in 20 minutes at a general conference, it can be handy. It is: ‘see what you can get away with’. Ask yourself, what's the least you can do to get your idea across? For example, you could be giving too much background information or using too much jargon. I do sometimes panic, thinking ‘Oh goodness, how am I going to talk about what I want to talk about without using all this technical language or without giving the full context first?’
Adam: I believe that, as much as the onus is on you as a speaker to bring the work to the audience and bring them into your work, there is a balance between what the audience brings and what you offer. The audience should work for you as listeners. They owe you their attention, in the same way that you owe it to them when they speak. Strive to be clear, persuasive, expressive, etc. But also let them meet you halfway in terms of the work that you've done, because you shouldn't have to simplify your findings to the extent that it is watered down.
Hannah: And make good use of your PowerPoint! If you know you can't talk about everything, you can sometimes show more information than you would be able to talk about.
Conor: But not so much that it distracts from what you're talking about—don't have your slides say one thing and you be something else!
Hannah: Yeah, there’s definitely a middle ground!
Conor: Some people put their whole paper on their slides. It's boring! Like, I'm just reading what you're reading and that's not fun for anyone. So highlight the key points and include images. Complement what you're saying. Be ruthless about what goes on your slides. You can hint at other things, but you really don't need to throw everything in there!
Hannah: Handouts can be useful when it comes to examples, although I would say these tend to be more of an in-person conference thing. Quite often you would get a handout to accompany a presentation which might, for example, include a score. If you want to produce something that will give people more information about your methodology or all the stuff behind your paper, you can still do so as long as you host it somewhere that people can access it or download it. This can be a way to get around giving too much information in your slides while still sharing the necessary resources.
On Delivering Your Paper
Anika: I tend to think of conferences as performances, to a certain extent. You want to engage your audience and make it interesting. Making it entertaining is useful to keep people on side. Making your presentation visually appealing helps too.
Adam: I haven't developed the skills of an ad libber, maybe that will come with time. But I do like to be prepared and there is kind of a sense of ‘ad lib’ that comes with being very familiar with the text that you're speaking from.
Conor: Use little reminders to pace yourself: take a breath, have a five-second pause between paragraphs, or take a sip of water. And have that glass of water in case you cough halfway through! I tend to talk quite fast sometimes. So to make sure I fill my 20 minutes correctly, I print out my script and I’ll always have ‘breathe’ written at the top of every page—not because I need the reminder or else I’ll die! It’s to remind me to keep it slow, because your nerves will get the better of you sometimes.
Anika: I like how you call it a script. That's definitely my approach to the thing which I read from. And I always read! I'm not quite there with ad libbing yet. I write every single word. Sometimes I write phonetically, if it's a complicated word, since, like you said, the nerves can sometimes get the better of you. But you will settle in. It may take five minutes of stumbling over yourself, but you will settle into it as time goes on.
Conor: It's the general protocol to read from a script. A lot of people do it and I don't always like it, but it does keep me on track. I do think it can be overly formal sometimes, but it’s the go-to approach, isn’t it?
Anika: From what I’ve experienced, reading is the norm for musicology conferences. Although, it really is down to your own preference and it also depends on the field as well. I do think there's a way to read a presentation that can be very engaging, or indeed very boring, depending on your inflections, slides, and so on.
Adam: Monotone reading can be really challenging for attendees. And speaking rate is really important. Like, I speak too fast—I always do! So that’s something I try to work on. Also, the thing about reading from a script is to know it backwards; to know it really, really well so that it seems almost as if you’re ad libbing, but it’s still concisely and precisely delivered. The strength of having something to read is that you can go into the depths that you should be going to with the research that you have conducted. If it's very ad-libby, it can come across quite vague, and you might not get to the intellectual depths of your research to the extent that you could. That's quite important, because your listenership is intelligent and they're there to hear you go into depth. So having something written can be quite useful and important.
Conor: Yeah, I completely agree. Another point that helps to keep things in a more conversational and engaging tone, is how you treat quotations. I don't like when people are reading a quote and they say ‘quote’, read it out, and then say ‘close quote.’ Just change your voice ever so slightly. You don't have to put on a French accent or whatever. Alter your tone and that can keep it a little bit more interesting for people. You can have the extract up on the slide as well, especially if it's a very long one. I think it keeps people engaged, while not coming across as too serious. And if an example in your presentation doesn’t work or I stumble over words, I tend to laugh. If you're laughing, it takes the pressure off. Like, if you mispronounce a word, say ‘let me try that again’—it really isn’t an issue, even though it can seem quite embarrassing. Everyone will relate to that; everyone will understand that you’re not going to say everything perfectly. Just read it and then say ‘I butchered it, I’m sorry!’ Acknowledge it so that you’re not coming across as careless. Just laugh it off! It relaxes the atmosphere as well.
Anika: Yeah, I agree that speaking without some of the ‘academic pretensions’ can often be more engaging, and I admit that I can fall victim to using the thesaurus a little bit more than I should! I'm going to butcher an Einstein quote that goes something along the lines of: ‘If you can't explain something in simple terms to anyone, then you don't understand it well enough yourself’—which I think is important to remember.
Adam: You can express things simply and this is actually a really good way of changing your own writing. When you know the words in front of you lend themselves very well to speech, delivering your paper becomes much more enjoyable and relaxed. This goes back to a previous point about practising aloud beforehand. When you’re practising aloud, be prepared to change almost every sentence you've already written. Speak it aloud and speak it fully, even just to yourself. Much of what you've written will change because you’ll realise that the sentence is not a ‘speaking sentence’—it’s a ‘writing sentence’; something that I can read and make perfect sense of. However, when you hear the sentence spoken aloud, you realise that it's way too long, that there's too many clauses, or that it's unnecessarily complicated—or whatever it might be.
Conor: Microsoft Word also has a ‘Read Aloud’ function. The voice can be irritating, but in the past it has helped me spot little mistakes I can fix, or phrasing I can alter.
On Minimising Nerves
Hannah: I would say that getting outside is very underrated—particularly since we are constantly inside and at our desks and we don't necessarily go to a different place to work. My top tip is definitely go outside!
Conor: Especially during online conferences when you're stuck inside for the whole day! Go into your garden or go outside your front door for a few minutes. Get a bit of fresh air, allow yourself to breathe before things start. That's how I calm nerves. Oh and tea! Tea as well!
Anika: Yeah, mine used to be breathing; like very focused box breathing. But what I’ve found much more effective for keeping my heart rate down—because it tends to fly before any sort of conference or presentation—is chatting with someone. I was giving a guest seminar recently and the host just talked away to me for the few minutes leading up to it. I didn't get a chance to think about being nervous and it was amazing!
Adam: For me the nerves are kind of inevitable. In terms of controlling them, I’ve found the best thing to do is to be as prepared as I can with the text that I’ll be reading, as well as the PowerPoint that I’ll have in front of me.
Anika: There's a very fine line between how your body perceives excitement and nervousness. It's more or less the same physical sensation, so you can flip that switch to convince yourself that you’re not scared. Easier said than done, for sure! But if you can persuade yourself to be excited rather than nervous, this technique can be quite effective.
Conor: I have one point on this that also feeds into Zoom etiquette. I made a rather unfortunate mistake when trying to ease my nerves before. I had my camera off and to calm me down, I was having a little sing-along to ABBA. My camera was off, but sadly the mic was on while I was humming a little tune. I believe it was ‘Voulez-Vous’! And I had to be muted by someone—thankfully not during a paper. So that's two lessons in one: always mute yourself and listen to a little bit of music to calm you down!
Hannah: Well I'm a bit of a geek and I have a whole conference notebook that comes with me to all the conferences. That can be quite useful because you might hear some people present at more than one conference. So it can be particularly nice to be like ‘I heard you present at x conference and it's great to see how your research has progressed!’ So that's a geeky thing, but it can be nice to develop.
Conor: Another thing is to have your camera on when you can. It's just so nice to connect with people. Even if you can't have your camera on all the time, it makes such a difference. Or sending in a little thank you message after a paper, it can make things feel more communal and collegial.
Anika: No matter how good or bad the paper may have been received on the other end, on my end I often think that it’s been a disaster—like, ‘I’ve mispronounced a word, the world is over!’ So when someone says ‘Thanks, I really enjoyed your paper’, even if it is just a courtesy, generic message, it can provide reassurance.
Hannah: Take a step back and remember that this is just one conference; it's just one paper and not the be all and end all of everything!
Conor: My supervisor said to me that your clips—audio, visual, whatever they may be—are as much for your audience and to exemplify a point, as they are for you to take a little pause. At my first conference, I had a 30-second clip 18 minutes into my presentation. That was no good to me as I was nearly done! Now, I have two or three short clips throughout to give me a chance to take a breather.
Adam: It really is very, very important to practice aloud and to think about what it is that you've written in terms of how each sentence sounds. This comes back to nerves because you will feel very much in control of the subject matter that you're speaking about. I lived in a flat with eight other people in the house and while rehearsing to myself, I was like ‘Oh my God, my flatmates are going to think I’m a freak!’ But just do it and don't worry about other people, because it will make such a difference.
Conor: If you have housemates or family around, read your paper in front of someone. Even if the conference will be online, read it in person!
Adam: I've done conferences where I've read the thing aloud to myself like 10 times, because it really helps, every single time!
Anika: What helps me afterwards is to have a debrief with someone. Ideally, this will be somebody who will not only tell you what was good about your paper, but also what you can improve on, because you might want to do it again and you’ll want to improve each time, hopefully. Depending on the occasion or location, we’re not always fortunate to have someone available for this—whether it be your supervisor or a friend. So get in touch with someone who’ll be going and ask if, by any chance, they’d be available for a quick chat afterwards or over the following days.
Hannah: Remind yourself of all the times that you've done something that you thought was just going to be terrible and it wasn't! Have a little faith in yourself, which I think can be difficult for everybody—maybe more so in academia, where your self-worth often seems to be tied up with your work.
Anika: And it's important to stress that everyone in attendance is there because they want to hear your paper and hear you do well. One of our professors will often say to the audience: ‘I'm feeling a bit nervous today, so please bear with me.’ No one will hold this against you. In fact, they’ll likely will you on. The same can go for research that you’ve just started. Admit that you’re only starting to scratch the surface and explore this avenue—that’s an exciting time in the project that you can share!
Conor: At the end of the day, you do want to enjoy the experience as much as possible. You've done the hard work, you've written the paper, you've made the presentation, and all you have to do is just read it. That’s one of the nicest bits to do, but sometimes it's the bit we get most anxious about. So just try to have fun with it and laugh off those silly mistakes. I've made many and nobody ever talks to me about them after!
Anika Babel is a third-year doctoral candidate at the UCD School of Music. Her research on representations of the piano in film is being supervised by Dr Laura Anderson. Anika has presented research at the British Audio-visual Research Network Colloquium, Sound on Screen, Music in the Disruptive Era, Music and Sound Design for the Screen, as well as at the annual SMI/ICTM plenary and postgraduate conferences.
Adam Behan is a PhD candidate at Peterhouse, Cambridge. As a postgraduate student, he has presented at conferences in Bangor, Cork, Graz, Surrey, Newcastle and virtually in Dublin and Connecticut.
Hannah Millington is a third-year doctoral candidate at Dublin City University studying the vocal works of Ethel Smyth under the supervision of Dr Róisín Blunnie. She has presented at and co-chaired conferences organised by the Society for Musicology in Ireland and ICTM Ireland. Hannah’s research on Smyth has also taken her to 'Women Are not Born to Compose': Female Musical Works from 1750 to 1950 (Lucca), the Third International Conference on Women's Work in Music (Bangor), and the annual conference of the Royal Musical Association (Newcastle).
Conor Power is in the third year of his PhD at Maynooth University. His research focuses on the American influences and idioms in John Williams’s film music. Conor has presented several papers at the SMI/ICTM Plenary Conferences and the British Audio-visual Research Network colloquia Series, as well as at the BFE-RMA Student Conference and La Creación Musical en la Banda Sonora/Musical Creation on the Soundtrack
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