Conferences in EAP

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<Xiaoqing Bi>Welcome to another episode of "All Things EAP". I'm Xiaoqing from Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University.
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<Sanchia Rodrigues>And I'm Sanchia at the University of Warwick in the UK. And I'm really excited to share this episode on organising conferences in EAP.
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<Xiaoqing Bi>Yeah, Sanchia, what was your favourite part of recording this episode?
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<Sanchia Rodrigues>Oh, good question! I think it would have to be the memorable moments at EAP conferences that the speakers shared. There were some really funny stories in there that I don't think we would've heard otherwise. How about you? What was your favourite part listening to the episode?
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<Xiaoqing Bi>I really enjoyed the discussion about the personality of the conference. It reminded me of a conference that I attended a couple of years ago, the Thailand TESOL International Conference. I think the atmosphere was really cheerful, energetic, welcoming, lively. It almost felt like being on a travelling cruise with a group of people who just happen to also be academics. And I remember during the opening and closing ceremonies and dinner party, the organisers prepared local Thai dancing and singing performances, and at the end of the conference they even organised a lucky draw. So everyone was super happy. It sounds like a small thing, but it really contributed to the overall feeling of the conference.
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<Sanchia Rodrigues>Oh my goodness. That sounds amazing. I mean, better than some of the parties I've been to, to be honest. Oh, I can only imagine how much work went into that behind the scenes.
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<Xiaoqing Bi>Yeah, I know, that's another point that I really enjoyed this episode, especially as someone who hasn't had experience organising a conference yet. This episode was really helpful because like we can hear all about these practical details that you probably wouldn't even think about unless you had actually done it yourself before.
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<Sanchia Rodrigues>Yeah. I feel like there's something for everyone in this episode, whether you've been to a conference or not, whether you've presented or not.
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<Xiaoqing Bi>Yeah, definitely. And speaking of conferences, Sanchia and I along with the rest of the podcast team are speaking at the Educational Podcasting Conference on the 18th of June, and we're really hoping to share some of your feedback as part of our presentation.
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<Sanchia Rodrigues>So if our podcast has had any effect on your thinking or practice in EAP or if you would recommend it to your colleagues, please help us out by clicking the link in the show notes and telling us. Thank you so much, and in the meantime, here's our episode on conferences in EAP. We hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we did. I'm here today with three of the organizers behind some of the longest-running conferences in EAP so let's start with some introductions.
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I'm Mark Carver. I'm a Lecturer in TESOL at University of St. Andrews, and we're about to have our 15th EAP conference on June 27th.
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<Kristin Solli>My name is Kristin Solli. I am Associate Professor of English for Academic Purposes at OsloMet in Norway.
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<Tom Muir>I'm Tom Muir. I'm also Associate Professor of English for Academic Purposes at OsloMet, and like Kristen, I'm one of the co-organizers of the annual Norwegian Forum for English for Academic Purposes conference. And we are going into our 19th conference this year. So up until, up until last summer, I was on the board of the European Association for Teaching Academic Writing, uh, and EATAW organises a, a biannual conference.
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<Sanchia Rodrigues>Thank you all so much for joining me for this episode. I'm actually in the process of co-organizing a, a conference myself. It's the second, Feminism x EAP slow conference, which is scheduled for the first week of June, and it's so much work. It's an unbelievable amount of work, so I wanted to start with a very basic question, which is just ... bother? Why organize a conference?
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<Tom Muir>Maybe a reason for organiser conference is if you feel there's, uh, a topic, that would benefit from a group of people coming together to explore it and to think about it together. If there's an aspect of EAP that is underexplored, where it would be good to talk about, a new angle or different approaches. I think the-- the important thing about a conference, is that it's an opportunity to think collectively, to bring people together to consider and discuss, and explore. So where there's an opportunity for collective thinking and developing, new angles for thinking about topics in EAP.
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<Kristin Solli>I think maybe I could add just from, from our institutional perspective as being in the sort of an EAP unit in Norway where the field of EAP isn't too big, that this is also kind of a, for us to keep in touch with what is going on with EAP in other places. So it's kind of a, for us, selfish part of this too, that we bring all the people to us and they tell us, "What is going on in your fields?" And it, it really enriches both our research and our, our teaching to have people come to us. so I think that's kind of one of the key motivators for our conference too, just what are other people concerned with right now?
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Yeah, ours started that way. So there were people you wanted to speak to, bring them to town, or there was a topic that we were discussing, it'd be good CPD, and then you invite other people to join your CPD or the people who were your keynote last year, ask if they can come back again, you kind of just build a bit organically from there. We started out, like choosing the theme : What are we interested in? What do we want to make our topic for the year? Who do we want to bring over? Or who have we all been reading and talking about anyway? So it, it's always been quite handy in that respect. Or if you have a new external examiner, they might connect you. You might choose your external examiner for your master's program based on what you want to work on for the next three or four years, and then they're probably a good connection for a conference topic, or they know other people who are connected. So it was very much growing the network, bringing the network to you. Uh, we'd always try to come up with parallel themes so the the one that rhymed was sources and resources. So we, we had a linguistic focus, and we had a use of sources focus. So if you're interested in one or the other, you could come to the same event ...
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<Sanchia Rodrigues>That's really interesting, responses there ... you all talked about that idea of collaboration, linking up with people outside your own context, but you also talked about that inspiration coming from the people that you work with or from the situation that in. These are teams that you're working with to organize these conferences. Can you organize a conference by yourself? Or is that not something that fits with the aim of what a conference is trying to achieve?
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It probably did start with Kerry doing it on her own, some of you may remember Kerry Tavakoli. Uh, it maybe depends on whether you're a unit or a school or much you can divide the labor. But for the first five years or so, it probably was a one-woman show.
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<Kristin Solli>I mean, same for us with, with, uh, Anne Golden, who was the person who started our conference. and she very much for the first several years ... I mean, she had some, I think, admin help, but, but mostly on her own in terms of, like, generating the ideas, inviting the people. So I think it started out that way. And then, as kind of our unit grew, it was also sort of logical to have more people involved. And also the conference grew a bit in size, even though we're still a very smallish conference. But I think if there's only one of you, you kind of need to scale it appropriately. So, if you can do a conference with 15 participants or something, then I think that's doable. Tom, what do, what do you think?
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<Tom Muir>I mean, Anne, in her trailblazing way, certainly showed that you can do it by yourself, but I would not want to do it by myself.
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It's a different atmosphere, so like -- different members of staff were asked to bake things for the break time. But now that we have a committee, we have to use central catering, and we have to check for allergies. And there's a lot of things you can't do when you're a group that one person could just do. So when I took over, you know, we have, you have these handovers, and Okay, but oh, you just ask the janitor to, like, unlock the lecture theater. So no, no, absolutely don't do that. We have to go through procurement and bidding, and we have to reserve it six months in advance and things. So, it-- there's something about doing it under the radar that I think appeals, and these grassroots things and... And like, how much do you charge, right? 'Cause if you're gonna have to cover catering and a lecture theater and things, then it gets up to, like, eighty euros per person. Or you can run it in your classrooms for twenty. Do you tell people that you're gonna provide lunch? Is there a hot lunch? As I was on the, the meetings of the Scottish Education Research Association, huge digression, apologize, about half of the meetings were about whether you would have a hot snack mid-morning, and until you resolved that, you couldn't discuss anything else. These things can spiral.
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<Tom Muir>These are vital questions though.
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<Sanchia Rodrigues>I've definitely been to conferences where I wish the organizers had spent a bit more time thinking about if there should have been a snack mid-morning.
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Yeah. Well, it's a serious point, isn't it? Like, do you have a fifteen-minute break so people can get a quick cup of coffee and get to the next session? Or do you want people to talk in the breaks, and you give them forty minutes, but then does the day drag? So you, you do have to think about these things.
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<Kristin Solli>Mm-hmm.
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<Sanchia Rodrigues>Thanks, Mark. I think that gives us a little bit of an insight into the kind of millions of decisions that you might have to make behind the scenes that someone who's not organized a conference might not even realize you've talked about. I wanted to go back to something you said earlier: you talked about the theme. Was it sources and resources?
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Yes.
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<Sanchia Rodrigues>So it sounds like that is the starting point for most of the conferences that you've organized. Is that right?
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Yes. So, often we do it as the plenary. So wh-when we get to the end of the day, when, you know, we-- you gather together whoever's left, then it's, " where, where are we taking this now? What, what are we interested in talking about next other times it might be a particular keynote that you, you want to bring over. So you, you see somebody and you think, "Actually, they're, they're doing really good work. I'd like to give them a platform," or, "I'd like to put some questions to them." It can be dictated that way, but yeah, we, we always try to look for something that has a few different entry points. So if you're very on the EAP side of, things, there's a theme, but also if you want to take a more, uh, linguistics approach, there's a way in there as well.
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<Tom Muir>the kind of thematic richness for us, um, that Mark is, is talking about here.
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Yeah, for this year it's a bit different. I saw a, a really good keynote, and I was like, "Okay, well, we need to bring this person to talk to our staff and our students." I've been to so many conferences this year, and whatever the topic is or whatever the theme's meant to be, everybody's talking about AI, and a lot of people are saying the same things or recycling the same tropes. And I just saw one person who was doing it totally differently, really rigorous approach, and I thought, "Okay, well, I'm gonna talk to him. I'm gonna tell him about the conference." And it's like, "Would you like to do something? What would you like to do? Let's negotiate a theme." So we, we did that a little differently. But it's that same sort of idea I don't just want a big celebrity who's playing the greatest hits. Like, we actually want something... not to throw names around, but, like, IATEFL, you know, I don't need to go to those keynotes 'cause I kinda know what they're gonna say. I could go look at YouTube from six months ago and watch something they did at another event. It's... And there's a place for that, right? Uh, you know, these are big events. They have sponsors. They need to bring in a certain number of people. But that's not what this size of con-- It's not what an EAP conference is about. It ha- it has to be a bit more niche, I think.
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<Tom Muir>Hmm.
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<Kristin Solli>Cause it's interesting w- with the way that you talk about the relationship between the keynote and the theme, and the sort of how they play together or not. Because I think in, in our, case, 'cause often we approach a keynote, which is just sort of people that we'd like to hear from, you know? And some of them are not necessarily squarely sort of EAP people, but just kinda to bring in like different types of perspectives. But then our theme might be , you know, beginnings, which is like ... the keynotes do not necessarily have, you know, their research might not be on beginnings. - So sometimes we have to do a little bit of if we give you this theme, we're interested in knowing what you do with it. But we have had some keynotes where we've had like, "Oh, this would be a good keynote for this topic." Like we did time, uh, a few years back, and then we had Bronwen Williams who'd written a book about time, during COVID and sort of student experiences and stuff like that. And it's also interesting how, um, like you said, Mark, y- you know, how important or not are the themes in relation to the call for papers and whether d- does it really matter what people talk about? Is the theme sort of like beyond the keynotes? Like, do the papers really relate to these concepts, uh, or not? And I think, I don't know, Tom, what would you say about our policy? We had a while, we had like sort of this box, "How does your paper relate to the theme?" We don't have that this year.
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<Tom Muir>No, we don't. I mean, one of the things that we're, we're thinking about is we want people, to do something interesting with the theme. We don't wanna be too prescriptive. We want to be open to surprises. And I think in, in a way , that's led us to being a bit more flexible with what we do, what we do with submissions where we can't instantly see the connection with the theme. I've become happier with the idea that the theme or the connection with the theme will emerge at the time, or it'll emerge through dialogue with other papers, or it will emerge through dialogue at the conference dinner.
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We also dropped that requirement, that prompt, at least for posters So particularly for our masters or PGR students, it's like, you know, sometimes they do just want to talk about whatever they're doing. So we dropped the prompt from the posters, but it's still just in there in the papers. Interesting we did the same thing.
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<Tom Muir>Yeah. And, and I guess that's sort of the, the other thing is, if somebody sends you something, that is really interesting but only tangentially connected with the theme, you're perhaps not doing yourself a favour by dismissing it for not being connected to the theme enough. Let's have the interesting stuff,
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please.
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<Sanchia Rodrigues>I was wondering how you kind of balance that richness, that variety that you've all mentioned with the sort of character of your conference. I mean, you've all been running these conferences that have been going on for decades, and I've had the pleasure of going to the Norwegian um, Forum for EAP, more years ago than I care to remember. But it definitely seemed to have a kind of a, a personality as a conference. And I think we can kind of picture the character of the other conferences that you mentioned. Do you have that sense that your conferences have, a, a character or personality you're trying to preserve? And if so, how do you do that?
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<Tom Muir>It's funny that Mark, you mentioned coffee breaks. Um, the character of NFEAP is lots of coffee breaks. We do want people to chat and interact, and hang out and get to know each other. This came about by accident cause it was when we were organising yeah, the 2015 conference and we had a run of bad luck where people kept pulling out people got ill, people couldn't make it, people's funding didn't come through. And every time we had a loss of another couple of participants, we just had to think, oh god, what are we going to do, what are we going to do now? Maybe, maybe we'll put in another coffee break then. And then another couple of people dropped out. "Oh god, what are we going to do?" "We'd better put in another coffee break!" And the coffee breaks in the day just grew and grew And at the end of it, we thought, we got through that. We had a lot of coffee breaks but we got through it. And then we looked at the feedback, uh and the feedback was all: "There are so many coffee breaks There's so much opportunity to chat and get to know each other and hear about the work that everyone is doing. This is great!" And so we thought, we're going to keep the coffee breaks, then. We're going to keep doing that.
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I think that's a-- yeah, it's a really interesting example that you gave 'cause like I said, the home baking, like when we lost that, that was a way to kind of, you know, everybody would chat about the different cakes or-- it, it created a moment and it does sound silly but I, I absolutely agree with you. I was at a conference in January, and they had accepted more papers than-- or more people showed up than they thought would. So They trimmed all the breaks down. They asked everybody to go from thirty minutes to fifteen minutes, and it totally changed the vibe. 'Cause I think if they'd said from the start, everybody has fifteen minutes, but but it just created quite a chaotic energy to the place and you lost those connections. And people found their own way of doing it. People were, like, going off to different parts of the hotel or going out and doing their own thing. Like, they created their own coffee breaks and just missed sessions. Do you want this massive event? you want people to go to everything? You're kind of showing what's important as well. So, like we put our keynote on last when everybody's left to go get the train. or when do you schedule your colleagues is probably a really good question. you know, do you put them all parallel, so you're not, like, always competing for space? Do you, do you let people go to each other's? And I always say you give yourself the worst slot, or you put your superstars in the worst slot because that, that creates a nice culture on the day. But yeah, All these little decisions, they make such a difference and, y-you're not gonna make everybody happy.
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<Kristin Solli>No. And, and the sort of like you said, Mark, the, the energy of different conferences, I think especially with regards to size and of course like, and that, you know, whether you're a huge academic association or whether you're three people at a unit. I mean, that sort of says something about the, the character, you know, whether it's kind of like a quirky boutique coffee break conference like ours, or whether it's a massive kind of again, academic organization with thousands and thousands of members. And I think those types of conferences serve very different purposes, and I think give also very different experiences in terms of, yeah, like you said, what you, what you get out of them, and whether it's at a, you know, the venue. Are you at a big hotel or, you know, locally? Are you in lecture halls at at your university? Where is the conference dinner? All those things kind of really matter a great deal.
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<Sanchia Rodrigues>So aside from the scheduling, which I think we've talked about, and, and the theme, which we've touched on, are there any other ways that, previous experiences at EAP conferences have informed the way that you approach organizing
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I would say the money comes into it if you get this idea that you see the same people again and again, and it's the, the people with funding. Looking at what other conferences do, so some of them have scholarships. Um, I think IATEFL actually does some pretty good scholarships and, they support people from particular countries or, career stages to go. I've seen some where they've given not even fee waivers for school teachers, but they've actually provided the school with money to cover their classes so that they can come to the conference or like, do you do your conference on a Saturday and then school teachers can come? If you think, "Well, who do I want to come?" And then look at what other conferences have done to make that possible. So ours is about professionalization, professionalism this year. Like, what does it mean to be a professional EAP teacher? Where is it under threat? Where are the pressures? A lot of the people we want to come to that, are at universities that have pulled all the funding for CPD, so we can't just ignore that. If we're talking about it, we need to organize the conference in such a way that those people can still come. We need to provide some kind of fund or some kind of discount or, we need to schedule at a convenient time, or maybe we need to provide childcare if it's about, uh, the pressures of managing managing work-life balance. So yeah, all these things, I think there has to be a coherence there, and I if somebody tells me they went to a great conference that allowed them to do X, then you can just steal their ideas.
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<Sanchia Rodrigues>I'm thinking again about the different conferences that I've been to and how different they've been, have you had any particularly memorable moments, uh, at the conferences that you've organized or any that you've had as an attendee, that kind of stick out in your mind over the years?
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one, the very first one that I was contributing to at St. Andrews. I was, I was put in f- in charge of tech, and, I was micing up our principal who was doing the welcome address, and for whatever reason, didn't do it properly. And so she did her twenty-minute opening address that not a single person in the room could hear. nobody wanted to interrupt her in full flow. But everybody came up and said afterwards, "It's really good the principal came. It sh-- Well, yeah, it's really good th-- 'cause we talk about EAP at the margins, and, like, the principal came, and she, don't know what she said, but she came and she opened up the conference, and it was a really nice gesture."
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<Kristin Solli>I have, uh, I've had as an attendee, I was presenting at a conference and it was one of these big association conferences with thousands of attendees. And I was, at the time I was, um, a PhD student, so I was very nervous about presenting and I was put in a slot with other PhD students who were also very nervous about presenting at a time when nobody would come to our talks. But all of us who were in the same panel, we were gonna play a music example. And it was back in the, like, ancient times when we got a CD player and had to push like the, the button to make it play. And we all had either video or audio clips and none of the Aequipment worked. So we were just kind of like, here you would've heard, a song that goes like..." Oh, it was just, was just so, so terrible. So yeah, the Astuff
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It helps when everyone's a teacher though, right? E-everyone can just roll with it.
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<Kristin Solli>But the little stuff, like the Astuff, it's actually quite important because, you know, everybody looks bad if things don't work, even though they seem like that you take for granted, but those things are important.
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I've, I've got a good one, which is, as a PhD student, like a little group of PhDers all sort of found each other, and we were just like comparing notes from supervisors and, you know, spreading gossip But that's really useful for like who do you want to be your examiner? 'Cause we're all there like presenting our papers. People are maybe saying they might be interested in examining, but you, you want to know is like someone a decent person or, you know, d- 'cause how are you as a supervisor is probably a good sign of how are you as an examiner. It's a valid question. And, I got my examiner from that event, on the recommendation of his, PhD student. So that, that was nice. And yeah, I can't go on a forum or a Jiscmail and say, " What does anybody think of David Cowless?" and he's a sweetie, I'm sure you'd get lovely feedback. But you, you can't have those conversations online. You have to have them in the coffee breaks, and they have to be spontaneous as well.
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<Kristin Solli>That example is just so great because I think that is really what conferences are for. I mean, one thing is like, yes, you want to present your work, you wanna hear other people's work. like you said, you could listen to YouTube, or you do the... I mean, there are other ways of getting that information or getting that research to you. But those conversations, are really key to what is really valuable about conferences. and I think that's kind of maybe, at least when I was starting out as a PhD or when I started going to conferences, that seemed like side business in a way, but it's like, no, that's the key stuff.
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<Sanchia Rodrigues>How does that work online? Is there a way that you can still have those impromptu, secret, slightly gossipy, but really important networks that you need, to produce all of these different aspects of the EAP experience?
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<Tom Muir>We've attempted it, and I think EATAW attempted it as well when everything was online during Corona. There were a bunch of platforms. I think the one we experimented with was, uh, Gather Town?
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<Kristin Solli>Mm-hmm.
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<Tom Muir>So the online environment, uh, is supposed to mimic a physical space -- in which your little icon or avatar can go up and interact with another group or another, person, in the same space. Some elements of the technology are there to make that work, but in practise we found that it didn't work
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<Sanchia Rodrigues>Oh, that's a shame. Do you think it was because people weren't quite sure how to use it, or does it just feel really unnatural?
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<Tom Muir>Maybe a mixture, a mixture of things. Perhaps people just didn't believe in it.
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<Kristin Solli>It could be different now that people have had more experience also kind of working online, teaching online, think not part of these conversations. So, I don't think that we found a good way of doing it, Tom, but we didn't really ... We only tried it a couple years, or was it just the one year?
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<Tom Muir>It was just, it was just the one
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They did watch parties, University of Edinburgh. so, you know, back during or just after COVID when more things were online, they would say, You know, "We'll, we'll all get together. We'll book this classroom, and we'll all come, and we'll watch this live session together, and we can chat about it. We can put questions in the chat." A watch party like you would do for like sports events or something. I think that, that's a cool idea that had potential. But that's still physical presence, isn't it? So maybe you just can't get past that.
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<Kristin Solli>Mm. Mm.
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<Sanchia Rodrigues>Yeah, it's definitely something I know I've spoken to my co-organizers of the Feminism conference series with, we decided that we wanted to have this slow conference. We wanted it to be free so that people could come. Then yeah, you have all of these things that naturally come out of, just being there in the conference mindset away from your other commitments and having that kind of space and time to think. But, maybe they, they're not, they're not so natural. kind of just a consequence of all of those things you've put so much time and effort into really carefully organizing and orchestrating so that that is the outcome. OK, I just wanna finish with, some advice for people who might never have been to a conference before. Um, whether that's 'cause they're earlier on in their career, maybe they're students, um, doctoral students, or maybe they've just not had the opportunity before. What advice would you give to somebody attending or trying to attend their first EAP conference? Should they try and present? Should they just try and attend and, and soak things up? would you say?
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<Tom Muir>If you have the opportunity to, um, to attend without presenting, then by all means, do it. funding is often attached to whether you are presenting or not, uh, which might move the dial towards only go to a conference you can, you can present at. There are certainly a couple that I, I've been to just as an attendee. And I've met interesting people, had great conversations, and, you know, it's been a thoroughly rewarding experience.
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Yeah, I would say note down, get the book of abstracts in advance if you can. Note down who you want to see. If they're on at the same time, then maybe see does somebody already have a video of their talk up online. Uh, I'd also do the emails afterwards as well. So, you know, thanking people if it was good or if you didn't get to go see somebody 'cause they were on at the same time you were on, just saying, " Would you mind sending me your slides?" Not everything has to be done on the day as well. You can do some preparation. You can just come up with an action plan. Probably good to leave some gaps and not completely fill every slot. I would say probably don't fill your day either. Like maybe take one session off. when I first started going, you, you, you want to be going back to back to back, and you want to see everything you possibly can. But it, it does just get a bit exhausting, and you probably stop taking it in. So maybe plan on not going to one session in the morning and one session in the afternoon. Give yourself a little bit of space.
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<Kristin Solli>I think that's excellent advice 'cause I think when I first started going, I felt like uh-- I've paid money to be here and somebody's paying me money maybe to be here, so I need to do my job. I need to go to everything that I was kind of playing hooky if I wasn't attending all of them when, when maybe that's completely fine. And also, I would say I mean, I know sometimes people are really nervous, but go say hi to people or say after somebody's presented, like,
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Yeah.
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<Sanchia Rodrigues>Before we finish, will you please remind our listeners when your conferences are and how they can find out more information about them if they would like to?
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<Tom Muir>So NFEAP this year is, uh, the 11th and 12th of June. and there is, there's a conference webpage if you just put in NFEAP.
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And the St Andrew's Conference this year is 27th of June. It's a Saturday. We've moved it from the winter to the summer, uh, so it's a lovely time to come. The theme is Rethinking EAP Professionalism, and as I mentioned before, we do have some, uh, heavily reduced tickets for people who don't have institutional funding.
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<Sanchia Rodrigues>Okay. Well, thank you again so much to all three of you, Mark, Kristen, and Tom, for making the time to have this conversation with me. I really appreciate it.
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<Tom Muir>you.
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<Sanchia Rodrigues>We hope you enjoyed listening to that discussion as much as we enjoyed having it. Before we go, I'll leave you with two more memorable moments from EAP conferences, as recounted by two of our listeners, Lucy Watson and Iwona Winiarska-Pringle.
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<Lucy Watson>Hi, my name is Lucy Watson from the University of Reading, the Norwegian Forum for EAP in 2017 at OsloMet stands out for me because it was such fun and I met the wonderful Kristin Solli. I was quite new to EAP conferences and was presenting with my colleague Neil Tibbots. I found myself sitting next to Ursula Wingate at the conference dinner. She was a big star in EAP and um, she was so warm and funny and we had such a good laugh. We were mainly talking about
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<Sanchia Rodrigues>the UK election,
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<Lucy Watson>which was Jeremy Corbin up against Theresa May, and she promised to bring us a bottle of bubbles in the morning if it went to Corbyn. Sadly, that bit of political history didn't work out, um, the way that I'd hoped. It was the first time I felt really welcomed into an academic community. One of the most interesting papers that day was Julia Molinari's on agency choice and voice in research writing. It was really exciting to see such critical discussions about the purpose and nature of writing in academia, and it made me feel like there might be a place for me after all.
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<Sanchia Rodrigues>Now, I should say, I didn't tell Lucy that Kristen was part of this episode of the podcast. That is genuinely the moment that she picked, that stood out to her, so thank you, Lucy.
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<Iwona Winiarska-Pringle>My name is Iwona Winiarska-Pringle, and I'm from University of Glasgow. A memorable EAP conference for me was 2023 BALEAP Conference in Warwick. I loved the theme of deconstruction and appreciated the real effort of the organising committee to do things differently, from subsidised campus accommodation and the original formats of the sessions to a co-created playlist. I met so many like-minded colleagues and had many interesting conversations, which led to exciting projects and collaborations. The conference energised me and gave me a real confidence to experiment in my own scholarship and practice.
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<Sanchia Rodrigues>Thanks to Lucy and Iwona for sharing their memorable moments from EAP conferences. Lucy, Iwona and I, along with our other co-organizers are the team behind Feminism x EAP a slow conference taking place from Monday the 1st to Friday the 5th of June. And you can find us at feminism x eap dot com We hope you enjoyed today's episode of All Things EAP. If you'd like to share your memorable moment from an EAP conference or a comment, suggestion or insight into something that we've talked about, please send us an email or voice note at podcast@baleap.org. You can also get in touch through our YouTube channel @ All Things EAP. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. We really hope you've enjoyed it and that you found something interesting or useful in it, and we hope you could join us for the next episode very soon. Take care. Bye-bye.

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