Creating a Successful Conference Proposal

Barbara Y. Welke, Distinguished McKnight University Professor & Professor of History and Law, University of Minnesota and
Kenneth Ledford, Associate Professor of History and Law, Case Western Reserve University
2010 ASLH Program Committee Co-Chairs

Updated by Sophia Z. Lee, Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania and
Fahad Ahmad Bishara, Associate Professor of History, University of Virginia
2022 ASLH Program Committee Co-Chairs

In 2008, Linda Kerber published three short articles titled “Conference Rules” that offered sage advice on presenting a paper, commenting, and chairing.  (The AHA reprinted the articles in the May, September, and October issues of Perspectives; we have included links to these wonderful articles at the end of our advice.)  Our goal is to offer some advice on another crucial element of presenting at a professional academic conference: putting together a conference proposal.  Our advice is tailored with the ASLH in mind but applies to many other conferences as well.

Point #1 Learn Something About the Organization.  It is helpful, as a starting point, to know something about the organization and the annual meeting at which you hope to present.  Since the first time you attend a conference is often because you’re on the program, we offer here some background on the ASLH.

The ASLH is a membership organization dedicated to fostering scholarship, teaching, and study concerning the law and institutions of all legal systems, both Anglo-American and those that do not operate in the Anglo-American tradition.  The ASLH holds its annual meeting in late October or November.  The conference runs from Thursday evening through Saturday evening, with sessions on Friday and Saturday.  ASLH meetings are relatively small (500 people) and welcoming.

All who attend the conference, including those on the program, need to register for the conference and pay the appropriate registration fee. In registering for the conference, registrants agree to conform to AHA standards for professional conduct adopted by the ASLH. We also ask that participants stay at the conference hotel if at all possible, as the ASLH has contractual room obligations it must meet to avoid penalties.  Information about conference registration, hotel rooms, and travel will appear on the ASLH web page in early summer.

Assume that the conference will occur in person, without the ability to present remotely. The ASLH does not currently have the technological capacities or budget to host a hybrid or remote conference. Typically (that is, absent pandemic constraints), the conference includes open receptions with food and drink on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings that most people coming to the conference attend, as well as buffet breakfasts on Friday and Saturday morning before sessions begin, and a lunch on Saturday at which awards are given.  All this food and socializing means that there are lots of opportunities to mix, mingle, and meet new folks.

These structured socializing opportunities, along with the quality of the panels, mean that attendance at sessions is high whether you find yourself on the first session on Friday morning or the last on Saturday afternoon.  There are no panels on Sunday.  There are generally six or seven sessions in each time slot and over 50 sessions in total.  The session timeslots are 90 minutes long.  The most traditional format for sessions is three papers with a chair and commentator, but every ASLH includes panels with alternative formats, including roundtables, author meets readers, and panels with a larger number of presenters (5 to 6) doing short papers (10 minutes) and no commentator. ASLH papers are presented orally, or alongside a handout that the presenter provides; there is no ability to show slides or powerpoint. Generally program committees are very open to alternative formats.  What’s important is that the structure suit the panel’s purpose.

Two final important details about the annual meeting: the ASLH welcomes graduate students on the program and there is (limited) financial support for international scholars and graduate students who are on the program.  If you are a graduate student, you should also consider whether you are eligible for the Kathryn T. Preyer Award. You might also consider applying to the Student Research Colloquium, which meets the Thursday the conference opens.

Point #2 Read the Call for Papers Carefully and Follow the Rules for Submission.  Program committees volunteer their time and are sifting through many proposals.  It is simply a matter of common sense to understand that you will maximize your chances of getting onto the program if you follow the rules for submission set out in the call for papers. This means submitting a proposal that meets all the requirements set out by the program committee, including format, details relating to deadline, length of paper abstracts, length of panel summary, and bios for panelists.  In the interest of maximizing participation at the annual meeting, the ASLH has a strict one-appearance policy (excluding appearances at pre-conference events). Prospective participants may submit proposals for multiple sessions, with the understanding that the panel chair will be responsible for promptly finding an appropriate substitute member for any session from which a participant has to withdraw because they are on more than one accepted panel.

Point #3 Designing a PanelThere are many elements to a well-structured panel.

 First, think about your audienceA well-constructed panel should both be structured to appeal to the audience at the particular conference and have appeal beyond a narrow subfield.  Particularly for scholars working in smaller subfields, one way to broaden the potential audience for a panel (and thereby increase your chances of getting on the program in the first place) is to make the panel comparative in some way.  This might mean structuring the panel to incorporate scholars working on similar questions in other geographic or chronological fields or scholars working in fields beyond history or law (e.g., sociology, anthropology, political science, legal practitioners).

Second, the goal of a conference presentation is to share your work-in-progress with a broader audience, get feedback on that work, and make connections with scholars interested in similar questions that can extend beyond the conference.  Program committees look for panels that foster these goals.  One way of putting this point is that you want to construct a panel that is diverse.  Diversity takes a range of forms: representation by scholars of different rank (from graduate students to senior scholars), diverse institutions, and participants from groups historically under-represented in the organization and academia.  Established scholars should consider including graduate students and junior scholars in their panels. If you’re a graduate student or an independent scholar, you will get more out of a conference session and maximize your chances of getting on the program in the first place by including others on your panel (presenters/commentator/chair) who are known through their previously published work in the field.  Your advisor though should not be the commentator, no matter how well known they are in the field.  Panels with multiple individuals from the same institution are far less likely to get on the program.  The goal is for conference panels to generate new conversations that are otherwise challenging to hold across geographic and institutional divides.

The ASLH’s Graduate Student Outreach Committee (GSOC) is hosting a spreadsheet where authors in search of a panel can post about their papers and panels in search of members can find paper authors. While anyone can post on the spreadsheet, it should be a particularly useful resource for connecting graduate students, junior scholars, and independent scholars with panel organizers.  Please note that this is a public document and any personal information posted there will be accessible to the public.

Third, plan ahead. Constructing a good panel takes time.  The deadline for submissions for the 2022 ASLH is March 18.  Start now!

Point #4.  Panel Construction Nuts and Bolts. There are several steps here.  If this will be the first (or one of the first) time(s) you’ve presented at a conference, we’d recommend putting together a traditionally formatted panel with three papers, a commentator, and a chair.  Because putting together a panel takes real work, you will find many overwhelmed folks who are delighted to be part of your enterprise because you have shouldered the heavy lifting.

Decide on a Topic.  Your first task is to think about the general topic/question that you’d like to shape the panel around.  This will likely relate to your work, but should be framed broadly enough to support a panel with multiple papers and attract an audience.  A good place to start is by looking at a past program for the ASLH.  You can find past conference programs here.

Begin thinking about a Commentator. Second, you should begin to think about who you would like to have comment on your work.  You’ll need to hold off on contacting your first choice until you have put the core of the panel together and see who is most appropriate for the panel as it comes together, but you should have ideas.

Find other panelists.  Third, you need to find other panelists.  This is a key opportunity to build professional networks beyond your own institution.  How do you go about this?  Lots of possibilities here.  Talk to others at your institution, including your advisor(s), for suggestions, consider a former student working on related questions from your institution who now teaches elsewhere, check dissertation abstracts and recent journal articles to identify scholars working on related questions, and contact friends at other institutions who might have suggestions. Don’t be afraid to reach out to more senior scholars even if you do not know them already, as they are just the kind of busy scholar who might be very happy to join your panel. GSOC’s spreadsheet (see Point 3) is another great place to find panelists, especially ones who can add diversity by rank to a panel of more senior scholars. You can also use social media, though since this is the least targeted approach you may want to include details about the conference (including dates and place) and explain the general topic for the panel.  Remember, the papers need to fit together well to make a successful panel.  Ideally, the papers add up to a whole that is greater than the sum of the panel’s parts, exemplifying a new approach to a subject, for instance, or placing the papers in a productive interdisciplinary or cross-field discussion.

Invite someone to comment.  Once you have the panelists set (including abstracts for their papers), you are ready to contact your first choice to serve as commentator for the panel.  It can seem like a scary thing to email someone you don’t know, but whose work you respect. (This applies to other panelists as well.) We say, dive in.  You’ll likely find senior scholars who are supportive and interested in your work.  Be sure your email notes the conference (including place and dates) and topic and title of the panel, the names of other presenters, who and where they are, and their paper titles and abstracts.  Do not feel discouraged or rejected if someone turns you down.  Everyone in this business has many demands on their time.  If your first choice can’t do it, turn to your next choice. You can also ask anyone who declines for suggestions of other scholars to try. If someone you invited to present a paper declined because they did not have a paper and they fit the commentator criteria, consider asking them to comment.

Invite someone to chair.  The chair is a vital member of a panel and like the commentator should be an established scholar in the field(s) to which your panel relates. The chair handles introductions, keeps track of time to ensure that all panel participants get their fair share of time, sets the tone of the panel and guides the discussion that follows.  These are crucial tasks.  That said, it is fine to have the one person serve as chair and commentator.

Draft abstracts for your paper & panel. Panels that speak to a broad audience and panel/paper abstracts that communicate their significance to legal historians who do not specialize in your subfield will be most successful.  Make sure to explain what’s new about your paper/panel and why it’s important.  Most members of the program committee won’t be up to date on your area of research, so help them out by indicating what gap in the scholarship your work fills, what scholarly literature your argument challenges, or how you’re drawing on new sources.  The panel proposal need not summarize all the papers—the paper abstracts will do that work.  Instead, it should focus on the panel’s larger theme(s) and the benefits of bringing these papers together.  Explain what scholarly conversations and contributions will result and why they are exciting.  If the panel brings scholars together across rank, subfields, geographies, or temporalities, you can highlight that in the abstract, as well as the benefits of doing so.

Following through. If you’ve initiated things, you’re the one who will have to see it through – that is collect abstracts and CVs and get everything submitted in the proper format to the program committee on time. Submissions have to be made online using this page. Just in case, you’ll want to leave time in advance of the proposal deadline to resolve any technical problems. This all takes time and work, but what you’re doing here is beginning to construct the kinds of collegial networks that can then continue for years.

Save the dates. All members of your panel should plan to be available on Friday November 11 and Saturday November 12, 2022, because ASLH cannot accommodate special scheduling requests.

Point #5 Conducting a Successful Panel.  Finally, there’s the conference itself.  We cannot do better than to refer you to Linda Kerber’s knowledgeable advice reprinted in AHA, Perspectives, May, September, and October 2008:

We look forward to seeing the wonderful panels you construct!

BYW/KL & SZL/FAB

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