Hello all,

I would like to know how important it is to go to conferences, especially as they are extremely expensive, especially the good ones in my field (registration fee + travel overseas + accommodation + personal allowance for a few days). I simply cannot afford attending them :(

So my idea is to only attend conferences if I can afford them (funding is not always available), even if they are not bigs ones in my field. I have so far not gotten anything useful out of the ones I have attended, yet I am always encouraged to attend them.

I am thinking of simply submitting findings from my research to journals after asking some academics in my department to read them.

Why are conferences so expensive? I am going to miss a few good international conferences because of financial issues, and thus, I won't be able to network as much.

What are your thoughts on my suggested steps?

Many thanks

For the same reason Glastonbury is- and that's in a field! Booking a nice big Harlaxton-style venue, big acts etc is not cheap- and i imagine nowadys there's an added fiscal pressure to do more than break even.

Yes, the prohibitive cost of conferences is a real deterrent for postgrads. The most irritating thing is the privately run conferences that invite you to present and won't even pay expenses, whilst they are raking it in! But many conferences run by academic societies are not run to make profit as such, it just is an expensive business.

I think it's a shame that postgrad funding for conferences is so patchy and often depending on your luck and how your department allocates its budget. Mine won't pay for conferences at all, so I'm also limited in terms of what I can afford and what external bits of funding I can get. Paying for an overseas conference would be like taking a foreign holiday, and I haven't even had a holiday at home for six years!

I've heard mixed opinions about how vital conference presentations are. My supervisors are encouraging me to go to at least one conference a year (despite the funding issues), but I've spoken to people who've finished their PhDs and attended only one conference throughout the PhD. I have heard a few people say that published papers are the biggest achievements in terms of academic progression, rather than conference presentations.

It's useful, but not essential. It is really helpful to chat to other researchers in your area, especially if you're at a small dept and no one else at your institution is doing anything similar. "Networking" is useful too.

Conferences are useful, but there's other ways to network (Twitter is rather good) and get experience of presentations more locally.

Conferences run by academic societies will often have a limited number of free/subsidised places for students. There are also random pots of money floating around not necessarily specific to one university for funding travel awards, so keep an eye out for those.

I think the importance of conferences varies by discipline. In humanities journal papers are much more important for getting a job afterwards than having a list of conference papers given, and much low cost - though also much harder to achieve - than attending conferences. By contrast in sciences conferences are more important, and it's normal for conference papers there to be published in the conference proceedings, which isn't normal for humanities, where conference talks vanish, unless published elsewhere after.

HazyJane gives really good advice. My tip would be to have a very hard think about whether conferences are necessary in your field (in some fields they are not), and if they are choose very carefully 1 or 2 to attend, perhaps nearer the end of your PhD. Also make sure you exhaust all possible funding sources. Some conferences give some student attendees bursaries to help with costs, departments can have other funds to help, and if you are funded by a funding council they may help. Also there are charitable trusts that will consider applications for help with travel expenses too, though you have to be organised to apply in advance.

Good luck!

Everyone in my lab just joins scientific societies for about £20 quid a year and then claims conference assistance. We can fund a conference a year like this - so far people have got between £1000 - £2000 (£300-800 from each society) for each conference

Many universities will fund only if you're presenting, so that's an incentive to get your abstract accepted.

Hi all,

I only got to attend one conference during my PhD and ended up presenting there. I was lucky as my stipend included money for travel which paid for trains and conference fees. However, I managed to get this entirely reimbursed (as did 2 others in my lab, neither of which presented) by the society which ran the conference. We all were members of the society and simply applied for money to cover costs.

So it's definitely worth investigating, as some conferences will give out money to students, especially if it's your first conference!

I didn't manage to go to an international conference, due to a mixture of costs and suitability, but I would say a smaller conference is just as useful, and is a whole lot cheaper!

Good luck

the same I was wondering. I understand they can be expensive where we have to be physically present but what is your take on e-conferences? These are happening due to Covid-19 crisis. Still, people are charging way too much?!?

A lot of the time the charges are a result of the conference organisers having to pay for the appropriate video conferencing license to host as many people as possible. I'm sure there are other charges too which attendees aren't aware of.

My university offers a small pot of funding for conference attendance (for self-funded students), however it comes with two caveats: 1) you can only claim if you are presenting, and 2) you can only claim once per academic year. This is fine if a student only intends to go to a very specific conference and no others, but I've been caught out already by claiming for a cheap conference and then being accepted for a more expensive one!

Also, a surprising number of international conferences are run at a profit or have to pay the organizing staff. More local or national conferences are usually cheaper because the organizers volunteer their time for free.

My uni cut the conference bursary funding due to COVID!

I suspect my university is only offering this bursary because of COVID, as conference travel is now non-existent and admission is either free or much cheaper than an in-person ticket.

I love how one university can cut costs by reducing conference bursaries and another introduce it because it is so cheap.