If this is the kind of abstract that you are writing, try to be as specific as possible: set out your research questions, mention particular case studies/archives/methods, perhaps mention some of the literature your work will contribute to. This can be a very useful feedback-gathering exercise, and many conferences will include specific panels for students at this stage. If you are at an early stage in your PhD, you may wish to present the overall agenda of your project. Most abstracts will need to do both of these. If their agenda is broad, your aim will be to convince them that your project sounds particularly interesting if they have tightly defined aims, you should focus on making clear how your research contributes to the questions they want to raise. Also note the final format of the papers: you can say much more in a twenty minute presentation than in a five-minute ‘lightning’ talk!Īn abstract should be a meeting point between your research priorities and those of the conference organisers. Never exceed the maximum if the length is stated as ‘in the region of x words’, stay within 10% of x. Write to the maximum number of words allowed: if no more than 500 words are permitted, a 200 word abstract will seem too short and light on detail. Be sure to understand exactly what is being asked for. The call for papers should specify the length of the abstract, and may occasionally have other requirements. Do you want some feedback on an early version of a particular chapter? A response to the big ideas of your thesis? Think about how your aims relate to the conference.īefore you start writing, make careful note of the format that has been requested. You should think carefully about which elements of your research speak most closely to the aims of the conference, and what it is you are looking to get out of the event. For some conferences, these are intended to be broad in order to attract a variety of submissions, while other events are far more specifically focused. The call for papers will identify a set of scholarly themes for the event. In this post I assume it is the conference organisers who are reading your abstract, but the same principles apply if it is being sent to panel organisers. Sometimes there are multiple layers to this: big conference have calls for panel suggestions, and once these have been processed the organisers of panels will issue a call for papers connected to their theme. Your conference abstract will be written in response to call for papers, an invitation put out by conference organisers that asks for interested scholars to send in suggestions for papers. Writing abstracts is a complex business, and in this post I will highlight some of the things to be aware of in constructing yours. So you are advertising something you have not yet done.Īn abstract is like an advert for your work Strangely, this is often for a piece of work that you have not yet finished, perhaps barely even started, as conference calls for papers are sent out months in advance of when the event will be held. In this sense, it is like an advert for your work. It has a tightly defined purpose: to convince the conference organisers that you will make an interesting contribution that people will want to hear. The conference abstract, a proposal of a few hundred words that is used to decide who will present at an event, may be among the first pieces of work that you send beyond your supervisory team. There is a genre of academic writing upon which much depends, but which does not get discussed as thoroughly as the conference paper, the journal article, the PhD thesis or the monograph.
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