What We Lost and What We Gained As a Result of the Pandemic: Conferencing, 2022
Shuyuan Liu
PhD Candidate, Faculty of Education, Queen’s University
The months of March through May typically feature the largest number of education-related academic conferences in North America. Conferences help to create an academic community among international researchers — a sense of cohesion that has proven particularly poignant during the COVID-19 pandemic. I became a more active conference participant in 2022. The close of the 2022 conference season has led me to reflect on several trends.
Conferencing in 2022: United while apart
Aside from several months of disruption early in 2020, concurrent with COVID-19’s wide emergence, I became increasingly accustomed to working from home — both in terms of virtual meetings and my daily environment. I also navigated online interactions within the terrain of academic conferences: I attended virtual conferences hosted by the Canadian Society of Studies in Education and the Canadian Sociology Association (CSA). I soon discovered that conferencing is an intellectual journey unlike any other I have taken. The weeklong conferences offered daily exposure to new, inspiring material, and I was able to move freely between the two. Although attendees were physically apart, it felt as though we were together.
Despite my enjoyment of these conferences, I contemplated my interest in (and the controversy about) switching to in-person meetings. Indeed, transitioning from the pandemic work-from-home mode has been as challenging as it was to first adapt to working from home in 2020. I participated in these online conferences this year with the hope that they will be in person next year. But a certain degree of trepidation remains — the uncertainty of traveling, the possibility of contracting COVID-19, and the ambiguity of what it will look like to return to in-person interaction. After two years of “isolation,” everyone seems to be reuniting all at once.
Stories behind research studies
People have had diverse experiences throughout this time of separation. The two conferences I attended showed me how markedly the pandemic has influenced the academic community. From social, cultural, and political standpoints, COVID-19 has touched all forms of research to some degree. Various stories underlie recent research efforts. Among work presented at the conferences, I learned about ways to perceive uncertainty during the pandemic: good can come from misfortune in spite of associated devastation. Several scholars investigated stakeholders’ decision-making amid COVID-19. In one presentation, I came to understand the complexity of longitudinal studies and how the pandemic has exacerbated related challenges; the profiled project had been prolonged but nevertheless generated interesting findings. Another presentation indicated how the pandemic created new challenges for communities such as the 2SLGBTQ+ population. I also came to recognize Islamophobia as a critical issue to be addressed in both the Canadian and global contexts, expanding my knowledge of Islam while confronting my own biases. These valuable learning opportunities would not have been available without the conference platform. All in all, I learned about more than certain research endeavors. I appreciated hearing the stories behind each project against the backdrop of the pandemic.
Stories underpin our own research as well: at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, we were attempting to make sense of a number of social justice issues (e.g., #BlackLivesMatter and the Indigenous protests) arising at the same time as a then-unidentified virus. These circumstances kickstarted a project in which we explored how youth perceive these complex topics — in the absence of traditional schooling and the ability to speak with their peers and teachers (Pillay et al., 2022). Our efforts received extensive feedback, suggesting that this project was not only meaningful for academics but also for a broader audience, including the general public. The overall response to our work confirmed my feeling that even during this pandemic-induced time of separation, people remained connected as they grappled with similar concerns.
Community: What was missed for the past two years?
Physical gatherings and travel became nearly extinct in academia during the pandemic. Over the past two years, I frequently pondered what COVID-19 had stolen from my daily life. It took away much of the exchange of ideas: face-to-face conversation, traditional in-person research, and academic networking. But it also showcased notable aspects of the academic community. As the pandemic coincided with my first two years of doctoral study, I realized that academic life is often lonely and sometimes calls for solitude — others may be by your side, but there are things that you must endure alone. This revelation helped me become more resilient and calm. I also learned that the academic community has continued to thrive, even during the pandemic, with people willing to offer support, share opinions, and celebrate each other’s accomplishments. Consequently, I felt that I gained more than I lost throughout two years of home study. For the remainder of my PhD studies, however, I am eager to experience in-person conferences.
The spirit of the academic community during the pandemic calls to mind an ancient Chinese tale referenced in a CSA presentation: An old man raised horses for a living. One day, he lost one of the horses. After a while, the lost horse returned, accompanied by another beautiful horse. The man’s son later went out for a ride on the newfound horse. Because this horse had not been trained, the son was brutally thrown from it and broke his leg. A year afterward, the Emperor’s army recruited all able-bodied men to fight in the war. The old man’s son could not go off to war due to his injury and was spared from enlisting. It was thus perhaps a blessing that the old man had lost his horse. As with the old man and his horses, the academic community has weathered ups and downs over the past two years, yet one can always expect something positive to emerge from this trying time.
Reference
Pillay, T., Ahn, C., Gyamerah, K., & Liu, S. (2022). Considering the role of social media: #BlackLivesMatter as a pedagogical intervention to decolonise curriculum. London Review of Education. 20(1), 1–14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/LRE.20.1.14.
