Look at me! Look at me!

Oh I do love me a conference.  Interesting people, papers and the chance to catch up with/meet for the first time my favourite academics.

Next week I am at the BASR/EASR 2013 conference where I’ll be presenting on the 2011 Census and the ‘Other’ category in the religion question, and on bio-medical conspiracy theories and the Indigo Children, (the latter is my PhD topic). 

I’m also going to be horribly forward and talk to some publishers about my work.  I’m still a very far way off from finishing but I really think that my thesis could be the basis of an interesting and accessible book.  To be fair, there probably arent that many PhDs out there who dont think that they should turn their thesis into a book, and hopefully a best selling one at that…

But this plan to ‘network’ intentionally at the conference raises a couple of problems for me.  One, I’ve only networked for work intentionally in the film industry, and the methods there are a little more pushy and aggressive.  So I really dont want to come off like that.  I thought I might make up some one page CVs to hand out… or is that too keen/prepared?

Academia is an interesting world to me, and I’ve tried before to talk to my supervisor who has far more experience of it  about the etiquette and norms I should be observing. I do have some other good mentors who have offered to introduce me to people and give me some tips on talking to publishers – and I’m always happy to receive more tips from any readers here (*hint, hint*).

I suppose the best documents for networking might actually be the papers I am presenting. One is completely finished (bar last minute rereading and panicking) and the other needs some finessing on two sections.  So off I trot…

Yes, this is an actual picture from one of my presentations – in this case a 3rd year Undergraduate paper on understanding contemporary religion… the drawing is all my own work!