Awkward small talk, awkward disco dancing, and even more awkward sex: if generations of researchers are to be believed, these are key features of many academic conferences.

But a scholar has warned that the comic denigration of conferences as dull and exhausting events has become so pervasive that it is now ¡°almost impossible¡± to imagine them as places of productive thinking or intellectual engagement.

Emily Henderson, assistant professor at the University of Warwick¡¯s Centre for Education Studies, said that there was a risk of a vicious circle: that because academics have been instilled with the idea that conferences will be boring and embarrassing, this was how they actually experienced them.

In ¨C given at a conference ¨C Dr Henderson detailed representations of what has been termed ¡°conference fatigue¡±: the feeling of discontent and weariness that comes from visiting too many conferences and from attending too many presentations during the same event.

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Drawing on sources such as online postings, articles in?Times Higher Education and interviews, Dr Henderson said that mocking depictions of social events often came to the fore: terrible food, dodgy hotels and the inevitable disco.

But the academic side of conferences also came under fire, with presentations being described as ¡°rather rushed¡­show-and-tell¡± affairs, tales of audio-visual equipment failing to work, and researchers signing up to events simply because they were in holiday destinations.

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These depictions were combined with physical constraints such as jet lag, hunger and hangovers, and temptations such as meeting friends, all of which were portrayed as resulting in non-attendance of sessions or lack of concentration during them.

Speaking at the conference of the Society for Research into Higher Education, Dr Henderson suggested that academics gained ¡°a certain amount of social leverage or purchase¡± from engaging in this discourse, helping to assuage the real feelings of exhaustion and awkwardness that could occur.

But, she added, it meant that there was ¡°a certain amount of shame that comes from having found conferences extremely inspiring and interesting¡±.

¡°All of these things make it almost impossible to imagine that a conference could be a site of productive thinking or intellectual engagement,¡± Dr Henderson said.

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Dr Henderson asked whether academics¡¯ representations of conferences were the result of their experience of them, or whether their experience of conferences was shaped, in part at least, by predominant representations of the events.

¡°Some of my participants talk about going as a peer group and being ¡®too cool¡¯ for the conference,¡± she said. ¡°Where does that legacy come from? Are they picking it up from peers who say, ¡®Don¡¯t worry about attending the conference, you won¡¯t get anything out of it anyway¡¯?¡±

Dr Henderson contrasted conference fatigue with what she described as the other dominant representation of conferences: that idea that they can form a ¡°defining moment¡± in the development of a discipline or the foundation of a research area.

Such representations, however, were often accompanied by a lack of any detail about the event, Dr Henderson said.

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She argued that conferences were an ¡°important site¡± for academic mobility, knowledge production and the development of academic practice; and that there was a need to develop new representations of these events that challenged the fatigue narrative.

Conferences were a worthwhile topic of higher education research in themselves, Dr Henderson said, something that was largely lacking at the moment.

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chris.havergal@tesglobal.com