SRHE member Emily Henderson (Warwick) runs the ConferenceInference blog with Jamie Burford (La Trobe), offering a unique gateway to research about HE conferences. Her most recent post is on the role of the discussant, and is reblogged with permission here. Other recent posts include:
Discussing the Discussant – a Queer-ish Role?
Receiving the invitation to act as discussant or respondent at an academic event can be accompanied by all kinds of emotion – excitement, relief at not having to prepare a paper, fear of not having anything to say… Recently, Conference Inference editor Emily was invited to act as a discussant for a one-day colloquium at the SARChI Higher Education and Human Development Research Programme, University of the Free State, South Africa. This was a new experience, as previously she had taken on this role at smaller events with one or just a few papers. As usual, being a conference researcher meant that the lived experience of this role took on the added intensity of reflexivity. Following the event, Emily and James (the other editor of Conference Inference) reflected further on the experience and decided that a fuller discussion on the discussant role – and its queerness – may be of use.
The discussant role is simple in name, queer in nature. The basic definition of a discussant is someone who participates in a discussion, particularly a prearranged discussion. In practice, acting as a discussant does not exactly match its name, in that a discussant tends to have to come up with a set of ideas based on the seminar or conference papers, which acts as a sort of impromptu paper in its own right. Dialogue may follow, but more often than not being a discussant involves something of a monologue. Sometimes, the presentation/s may even be supplied in advance so that the discussant can literally write a paper on the paper. There is a lot of variety in this role, and the format varies hugely, but we have brought together our thoughts on the topic to give experienced discussants some further things to think about, and to introduce this somewhat queer phenomenon to novice conference goers. Continue reading
