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What is a symposium?

A symposium is an academic conference whose purpose is to present finished work, but more importantly as an opportunity for scholars to share work in progress with other scholars and with an engaged audience.
  • Audience members see how other scholars working on similar or parallel questions construct their objects of study, handle evidence and interpretation, and make arguments about the significance of their work.
  • Presenters get substantial feedback from the audience about the persuasiveness of their work, as well as suggestions about other ways of understanding it.
  • Conversation will be guided by a moderator.

Presenters should feel free to solicit help from the audience, and the audience should feel empowered to offer their personal and scholarly responses to the work they hear. Both sides are welcome to disagree, to explore unanticipated connections between their work, to consider the nuances or significance of the work presented, or engage in any other kind of free and frank discussion.



A copy of all written material will be submitted to the moderator for possible publication in the symposium minutes.

Presentation Formats

Aside from the more general expectations of conference presentation outlined above, each presentation format and style comes with its own expectations, whether you are reading a paper as part of a panel, participating in a roundtable, or present a poster. 

Panel: A panel session generally will have three presenters each speaking for 5 to 10 minutes, followed by 10 to 15 minutes of discussion. A presentation may be a written essay read out loud, a more informal presentation delivered from notes or a PowerPoint presentation, or some combination. While writing and pacing your presentation, estimate 2 minutes for a double-spaced page.



Roundtables: Roundtable presenters, like panel presenters, are likely to have written an essay about 3 pages long; unlike panel presenters, roundtable presenters do not read the entire essay. Rather, a roundtable generally will have 4-5 presenters each speaking for about 5-10 rehearsed minutes about their work, followed by 10 to 15 minutes of more free-ranging discussion among presenters and audience. That reading might include:
  1. Reading a synthesized version of your full longer paper, 
  2. Reading the intro part and then talking through the rest, 
  3. Talking through the intro and then reading select passages or discussing one or two particularly compelling examples.

The idea here is to get the audience up to speed with what you are doing so they'll be able to discuss your topic intelligently in the Q & A that follows. In that spirit, roundtable presenters are expected to have carefully read one another's work ahead of time and prepared questions for one another. The Q & A can be a good place to discuss more fully things you weren't able to work into your presentation.


Research Poster: Research Posters stress technical information. A poster is a static, visual medium used to communicate ideas. This format is most often used by the sciences and some social sciences to present research that is highly technical or makes use of a large amount of data best relayed visually. The poster should do most of the 'talking,’ and the material presented should convey the essence of your message. Presenters are expected to be present, so that they can explain and discuss the information on their posters with interested viewers.


(Contents of this page based on material from The George Washington University)
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