Confessions of having never attended a conference before

It is very easy to assume that everyone knows what happens at a conference. When I saw Women Who Create: The Feminine and the Arts 2024 advertised at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, I knew it was something that would benefit both my research and my poetry – my PhD is researching how Barbara Hepworth’s sculptural practice can inform a new poetic practice in poetry.  

Having never been to a conference in person before, I had no idea what happens at one, and being a very anxious person, I booked without submitting a paper.  

I am new to academia and make no apologies for being cautious in approaching these things.  

I message my lecturer friend when it starts. I am overwhelmed by the decisions involved in choosing what to attend, sessions include: Narratives of Renewal: Exploring Cultural Resilience and Representation, and Rewritings, Escapes, and Representations in Women’s Literature, and Expressions of Womanhood through Poetic Inquiry which sound so wonderful but which leads to FOMO – panicked I message my friend again who assures me that there is an art to a conference – you can’t see it all, Wendy.  

And yet, I want to listen to everything. 

Within the weaving narratives of each paper, the intersections of other people’s research swim touch my own early research. What stands out to me is the passing sea of ideas, the determination of self within the work presented, and the passion behind each of the projects.  

The interdisciplinary nature of the conference and the intimacy of each session felt deliciously at odds with the independent loneliness of PhD-ing. Then came the excitement of new connections and contacts (the NETWORKING) which people always comment about. There is a thrill of meeting researchers whose work relates to you own work. At this point, six months into my first year, it makes me smile to remember the way I described my PhD with tentative first date nerves, but with increasing confidence as discussions developed.  

Afterwards, as if to frame this first conference experience, I visited Hepworth’s Four-Square (Walk Through) at Churchill College and Ascending Form at Murray Edwards College as a fitting conclusion. The bronze sculptures create a physical space in which I can process what I have heard. I place the flat of my hand against the cold bronze of Four-Square (Walk Through), like my own personal summing up of the weekend.  

It is important to note that, as an unfunded student, I felt financially restricted in booking a conference. I was delighted when I realised that I could apply for funding through The Doctoral College, who funded the trip through a Conference Support Award.  

Most importantly though, I left the weekend with a determination to present my paper next time.