Conferences: Is it time you had a fashion makeover? (Jessica Peters & Deena Ebaid)

This post is cross-posted from the academic conferences blog Conference Inference, with kind permission. Thanks for sharing your experiences of conference organising with us, Jessica and Deena! View original post

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Camila Damásio | Unsplash.com

Don’t be fooled by the title, this blog post is not just for fashionistas. For those who are curious, the psychology behind fashion is quite fascinating and can even be employed to up your conference networking game. Take this blog post for instance – if it wasn’t for a love of fashion, conferences and twitter (#pinkpantsuit), we wouldn’t have been invited to write this blog piece at all!

For many people (the two of us included), fashion can be used to showcase personality, and help feel more confident and better placed to accomplish the task at hand. Think of the old adage “look good, feel good”. I (Jessica) have applied this notion in many aspects of my professional life – job interviews, psychological practice, and university teaching. For the latter, my fashion choices were particularly helpful when I first started tutoring undergraduate classes. I was nervous about public speaking and doing a good job and was only a few years older than many of my students. Dressing smart helped me feel more confident, competent and visually set me apart. So why not apply this principle to conferences?

You can never be overdressed or overeducated – Oscar Wilde

 Presenting and networking at conferences can be daunting for many early career researchers. Worries about public speaking, contributing to discussions, talking to your science heroes, and maybe even a touch of imposter syndrome (see also Kate Carruthers Thomas’ post).  Many conference attendees are often so busy communicating study findings that it can be easy to forget that personality and individuality can also make an impact. After all, academic conferences are more about research and less about who we are as individuals or what we wear. Or are they...?

What you wear is how you present yourself to the world, especially today, when human contacts are so quick. Fashion is instant language. —Miuccia Prada

Deena Ebaid presenting at the ACNS Conference 2018

I (Deena) remember preparing for my first academic conference and as part of that preparation, I went shopping for ‘conference clothes’. I recall thinking ‘what do I want these clothes to say about me? Why does it matter? Do clothes even say something about you?’ Later on, a pivotal moment that returned fashion at conferences to the forefront of my mind, was when another postgraduate student at a conference told me that I “didn’t look like a PhD student” implying that I looked un-academic somehow (see the photo above). Was my fashion and personality impacting on how seriously people took me and my research? This has resonated with me because it was very early in my research career and it left me anxiously wondering : what does a scientist look like? Since then I have come to learn that there is no uniform in academia – just like there is no mould for being an academic.  There is so much diversity in research topics and fields and of course, the researchers themselves– and isn’t that one of the greatest things about research? It took me a long time to realise that the way I dressed at academic conferences should not be about (what I thought) was expected of me. It also took me a while to come to terms with the idea that my personality is allowed to be showcased at such academic events instead of being hidden behind formal wear and a big scientific poster. Several conferences later, it has become clear that fashion, as an expression of my personality, is an important part of academic conferences.
Although this post has, to this point, focused on positively utilising fashion to enhance academic identity, it is also important to acknowledge that conference attire choices can (unfortunately) have negative implications. Many readers will probably agree that there is often an implicit expectation to dress professionally at conferences. Researchers may feel a need to adhere to this code or risk feeling that they may not be taken seriously or that they do not belong. This may be stronger for certain conferences and disciplines and likely varies widely in terms of what ‘professional dress’ means, making it all the more difficult to grasp an already subjective concept. If there is an implicit expectation for a certain dress code at these events, then anything that strays from these norms may stand out – and this is not always a comfortable experience. Have you ever walked into a room and felt like you were under- or over-dressed and all eyes were on you? Also, consider how individuals of different cultures, religions or identities may feel perceived by their peers. If attire does in fact say things about you, it may also be the case that fashion may be used by others to inadvertently objectify or infantilize the wearer. Despite careful selection of ‘appropriate’ attire, this is sometimes unavoidable because other people’s perceptions and judgements about attire is subjective (The pink pantsuit probably raised a few eyebrows). As women in STEM, we feel fortunate to be able to express ourselves through our fashion and maybe even help challenge expectations of what neuroscientists look like. So this begs the question, what can science tell us about how fashion can be used to help us to be perceived positively, and how can we apply this to conferences?

Style is a way to say who you are without having to speak. —Rachel Zoe

Proactive clothing choices have been shown to significantly improve the wearer’s mood, confidence, self-esteem, sociability and occupational competency (for a review, see Kwon 1994).  Those who dress to boost confidence are also more likely to be at ease with themselves, with their clothing choices used as an opportunity to make a positive statement about who they are. Clothing preferences are also used by others to infer a wearer’s personality. Others perceive those who make deliberate, but subtle fashion choices that do not conform to the setting, as having higher status, competence and autonomy (Bellezza, Gino, & Keinan, 2014). For example, a professor who wears red Converse sneakers during a lecture, or someone who deliberately chooses to wear a red tie at a black-tie affair. Moreover, it only takes others a split second (100ms to be exact) to form a first impression of you (See Willis & Todorov, 2006). This means that even before you’ve had a chance to dazzle them with your research prowess, your clothing has already spoken volumes.

Jessica Peters presenting in her #pinkpantsuit at the ACNS Conference 2018

From a neuroscientific perspective, our ability to process visual information at any given moment is limited. Consider how much information we are being bombarded with every day, let alone at a conference - information overload! So how does our brain choose what to notice and what to ignore? We have evolved to preferentially process the most salient information. Therefore, information that is more visually salient is also more likely to capture attention, be processed, and retained in memory.  In fact, at a recent conference, a colleague of ours was easily found in the crowd by her now employer after they were told by her PhD supervisor to find “the girl in the brightly coloured dress”. She is now off to complete a postdoc at Cambridge. So, if you enjoy fashion, consider what you want your conference attire to say about you. Think about how you can use fashion to boost your networking, stand out from the crowd (figuratively or literally), and be more easily remembered by prospective colleagues and employers.

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Jessica Peters (@Jessica Peters) and Deena Ebaid (@Deena_Ebaid) are both completing their PhD research in the field of cognitive neuroscience under Professor Sheila Crewther, and teach in the psychology department at La Trobe University, Australia. Jessica is a registered psychologist (Clinical Neuropsychology) and her research focuses on the role of visual attention in reading. In particular she is interested in how visual attention interventions can improve reading in children with dyslexia. You can find out more about Jessica’s research here and here. Deena’s research focuses on how the healthy brain processes information across different stages of the lifespan. Specifically, she is interested in how best to measure cognitive processing in healthy aging, and how these findings may apply to clinical populations with neurological insults. Deena is concurrently completing a Master of Occupational Therapy at La Trobe University. Follow Deena’s updates here and here.  

Giving career advice to your 16-year-old self (Megan Cook)

Bud Helisson | Unsplash.com

Recently, I was invited to head back to my old high-school to talk to Year 10 students who are currently engaged in a week-long intensive focusing on careers and the future.

It was fascinating to be asked to reflect on my own career journey, a career journey which has led me to work as a researcher in a university research centre.

While I never entertained the possibility of becoming a researcher during school (I’m not even sure I knew that there was such a career), I have been given a range of wonderful opportunities during my post-school years which have culminated in my decision to start a PhD.

Blogging your research

Photo by Hannes Wolf | unsplash.com

There's a first time for everything and the first time for the 'Blogging your research' series of workshops was Semester 1, 2019!

We (Tseen and Jamie - RED team members) wanted to run these sessions because we're both big fans of academic blogging, and have gained so much value from the practice both professionally and personally. It has been a lot of fun sharing our knowledge, tips, and strategies with highly engaged La Trobe staff and graduate researchers from different stages of career and a varied bunch of disciplines. And we have learned a lot in the process of bringing together these workshops.

One of the activities for the final workshop is to work with the class on writing, formatting, and publishing a blogpost. We wanted to make it live from within the workshop itself! So, that's what this post is: a communal post from the inaugural RED series of blogging workshops.

We asked our participants to reflect on the sessions they've attended and the discussions we've had. What was the most valuable thing they learned from them?

La Trobe - the most Wiki-engaged university in Australia?

Image by Michael Mandiberg CC BY-SA 4.0

Only six people ever read my doctoral thesis. Six. After years of research blood, sweat and tears poured into this document, that is the impact my work will have. It was that realisation that drew me to writing for Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is by far the largest encyclopedia to have ever existed, replacing - for free - what used to be a luxury item only a few decades ago. The encyclopedia is one of a set of projects hosted by the WikiMedia Foundation, which is refining its strategy through to 2030 to be a leader in the open knowledge movement.

Academic publishing readership versus Wikipedia’s yearly readership. 

(Thomas Shafee CC BY 4.0)

Since I started editing and writing for Wikipedia in 2013, I’ve been busy trying to promote new ways of engaging academics, researchers and experts in improving its accuracy. By working with PLOS and the WikiJournals, I’ve helped develop ways to entice experts to write Wikipedia articles by combining the best bits of the encyclopedia’s massive reach, and the rigour of scholarly peer review. They’re likely to be the most-read work that most academics will ever write.

You and your academic profile

Aspirational avatar | By Tseen Khoo

Did you know that every researcher at La Trobe now has a university academic profile page?

Yes, EVERY researcher!

Academic staff have always had one and now all graduate researchers do, too! This coincides with the issuing of institutional staff accounts for grad researchers, a move that gives everyone a great opportunity to present their researcher profiles as they would like.

This post is for all those researchers out there - no matter what stage of career you're at - who have yet to populate their academic profile page.

The Emerging Impact Landscape (Wade Kelly)

White Night Melbourne 2018 | Photo by Wade Kelly
Shared via Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

There’s considerable confusion about what ‘impact’ is, and this is no surprise given that it’s a term that’s used for so many things in the contemporary research space.

For my research, I’ve had many, many conversations with people across higher education in Australia and Canada at all career levels (graduate researchers, Early Career Researchers, Mid Career Researchers). Alongside the confusion about what impact is is what impact means (and will mean) to academics.

The following primer is a brief history of the impact landscape, an exploration of some of the trends in higher education, and some things to consider as you start your ‘impact journey.’

So, let’s start by clarifying some of the many meanings of impact. I find it easiest to consider impact as happening either inside (internal) or outside (external) of academia.

How cups of coffee lead to world leading research (Greg Dingle and Sam Grover)

La Trobe Sports Park | Photo courtesy of La Trobe University

What is it about a cup of coffee that can lead to a $48,000 research grant and world leading research?

The answer is that if that coffee is had at a university Early Career Researcher (ECR) event then, more likely than not, emerging researchers will be also talking for the first time with other researchers from outside their discipline where they have exchanged ideas and realised the linkages that exist between their seemingly disparate research interests.

The scenario described above actually happened in October 2015 when we – Dr Samantha Grover and Dr Greg Dingle – were chatting between sessions at the La Trobe University ECR Network Conference in the John Scott Meeting House.

We were there to give presentations on our latest research and explore the potential for collaborating with researchers from outside our disciplines. Sam is a soil scientist, and Greg is a social scientist specialising in sport management. In addition, Greg thinks that the opportunity to have a free lunch should never be missed!

Showing up (Rachel Loney-Howes)

This article, written by La Trobe University PhD alumna Rachel Loney-Howes, is cross-posted from the University of Wollongong Careers blog. It is an excellent example of the importance of building your profile and reputation as a scholar and colleague from early in your career. 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Photo by Fabian Gieske | unsplash.com

In recent years, career development researchers have focused on the role of chance and luck in career development. They’ve found that, although on reflection we have a tendency to ‘reframe’ our career success in terms of luck, there are certain behaviours and attitudes that contribute to taking advantage of ‘chance’ events. Dr Rachel Loney-Howes a Lecturer from the School of Health and Society here at UOW was ‘lucky’ enough to start an ongoing academic position 6 months after her PhD (yes – 6 months!) In this blog post, she talks about one of the behaviours that helped make that happen.

Using rewards to help you achieve your writing goals (James Burford)

Photo by Jennifer Pallian | unsplash.com

As a lecturer in the RED team, I facilitate learning opportunities for La Trobe’s researcher community. Across these workshops we often touch on one of my favourite topics: rewards, and how they can be helpful for researchers who are trying to motivate themselves to achieve writing goals.

Writing is often a lengthy process for researchers. Motivation can sag as the hours turn to days and the days tick over into months. Added to this picture are the brain bending, shoulder crunching and finger cracking realities of many hours spent at a keyboard trying to get words on a page. It can be exhausting work on all levels, which makes pushing on so difficult sometimes. This is where rewards (some people call them power ups), combined with appropriate planning can be so useful for researchers. Some positive reinforcement can be a really valuable way of sustaining motivation throughout the long duration of a research project.

Spaces that matter for graduate researchers (James Burford)

Given that this post is all about the spaces and places research is conducted in, let me start by describing the space I currently find myself in. I am clicking the ‘publish’ button on this post while sitting in a library at Thammasat University in Pathumthani, a province in the northern part of the Bangkok metropolitan area. The library I have been working in this morning is possibly the coolest place on campus, which is important given that the temperature outside is hovering around 40 degrees celsius! This library is named after Puey Ungphakorn, the former Rector of Thammasat University. Professor Puey is an important figure in Thai history. He resigned his rectorship (what we might call vice chancellorship in Australia) in protest following a massacre of university students on campus in 1976 and subsequently fled Thailand for his own safety, ultimately dying overseas. The ground floor of the library features an exhibition about Professor Puey’s life and service, and nearby to here is a memorial to those killed in the 1976 massacre. Sitting in this library, I find myself thinking about the uneasy social space that universities often occupy and the risks that have been taken to defend universities as spaces for critical and creative thinking.