ABSTRACT
Conferences are important but neglected research sites. Yet conferences are sites where knowledge is constructed and shared, where careers are made and unmade, where important connections are formed, and they play a vital role in the development of research fields. There are many factors which determine who accesses which conferences where; this chapter focuses on the impact of caring responsibilities on academics’ access to and participation in conferences. Importantly, ‘access’ in this chapter is conceived of as both the ability to attend conferences, and the ability to participate in conferences once there. The chapter locates the specific discussion of conference attendance in the literature on academics and caring responsibilities. The chapter then considers the methodological and theoretical challenges involved in researching how caring responsibilities impact on academics’ experiences of being at conferences; this section addresses the design and implementation of a time-log research tool which was used in the research project ‘In Two Places at Once: The Impact of Caring Responsibilities on Academics’ Conference Attendance’. The third part of the chapter presents findings specifically from the time-log aspect of the research project, in which academics recorded the frequency, type and experience of contact with caring responsibilities during conferences.
