Addressing the imposter within: four intrepid early career researchers seek to share their research at an International HE conference
In this blog post, School of Education postgraduate researchers Gareth Bramley, Nicola Hindmarch, Victoria Hunter and Stacey Mottershaw offer their reflections of attending and presenting at the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) Conference in December 2024. The SRHE’s annual international conference took place at the East Midlands Conference centre, focusing on advancing the understanding of higher education, supporting and disseminating research and practice, and providing a platform for the perspectives and knowledge offered by systematic research and scholarship.
Gareth Bramley — University Teacher, University of Sheffield, EdD Researcher Year 5
This was my first SRHE conference. My interest was piqued by the conference theme (Higher Education: A Place for Activism and Resistance?). Given that my EdD thesis centres around notions of neoliberalism and resisting complicity with neoliberal discourse, it seemed a great opportunity to pitch for.
Nicky (Nicola Hindmarch, PhD researcher, School of Education) and I were lucky enough to have our abstract accepted (available on request!). The theme of our paper was ‘active resistance’, focusing on the ability, or obligation, to actively resist and critique notions of perfection, professionalism and ambition across legal and nursing disciplines. Despite some trepidation about being two ex-practitioner teaching focused academics based in different disciplines and institutions, we found our presentation to be well-attended with a very engaged audience. We took quite an informal, interactive approach to our presentation which allowed for audience participation and a vivid conversation around notions of failure.
Beyond this, the conference was a great learning experience. As always, my brain was full by the end of it, but the range of talks, friendliness and shared interests of the delegates, and the lovely facilities and passionate organising staff all made for a great 3 days. The main challenges were the cost (definitely not possible to attend without institutional funding support), the timing being at a busy teaching period, and the slight weighting of teaching & research staff over teaching focused academics.
Nicky Hindmarch — Senior Lecturer, University of Derby; PhD Researcher, School of Education, University of Sheffield
This year’s SRHE conference theme seemed like an ideal one for my first SRHE conference (and my first ever conference as a presenter) as it links well with my PhD topic which is looking at the marketisation of education and how this affects how people engage with education.
Gareth and I were keen for one of our ‘acts of resistance’ to be presenting in an interactive format rather than a straightforward presentation with questions at the end. As teaching focussed academics it is easy to fall into the trap of feeling like an imposter when presenting research and feel that we must tow the party line and seem as academic as possible, so this was a gamble however one that paid off! People were very keen to be involved and had engaging questions and insights which was a joy to see.
Seeing other presenters demonstrating a variety of creative methods, both in their research and during their presentations really opened my mind to some exciting possibilities and hopefully some exciting collaborators.
Stacey Mottershaw — Associate Professor (Teaching Scholarship), Leeds University Business School; Fifth year EdD Researcher, School of Education
Like Gareth, I was drawn to the SRHE conference theme around activism and resistance, as these concepts are often embraced within the context of my EdD research exploring the career decisions, journeys and trajectories of working-class academics.
It was a pleasure to prepare and present one aspect of my initial findings, ‘Is ‘solidarity’ the most important word in the language of the working-class academic?’, and I am grateful for the thoughtful questions posed by audience members around what it means to be working-class in the academy and the emotional labour that working-class academics have to undertake to consistently and continually defend their very existence.
Beyond my own presentation, I thoroughly enjoyed meeting other like-minded academics, and connecting with colleagues in-person for the first time after, in some cases, years of interacting online!
Vicky Hunter — Deputy Head of School, Leeds Trinity University; EdD Researcher, School of Education, University of Sheffield
Higher Education conferences always seemed really quite scary. The whole process of only being able to attend if you were presenting and having to apply for funding through your institution just seemed daunting. I attended the SRHE Conference as a successful recipient of the SRHE scoping review funding along with a colleague. We applied for £5000 to look at the HE experiences of young males who had been released from a professional sporting environment. The conference was our chance to present our findings up to that point. The SRHE had allocated us a mentor as part of the funding and it was his support that gave me the confidence to apply to the conference. David Lavalee is a respected researcher doing important work around athlete transitions and was very supportive of our idea.
The run-up to the conference was interesting -.our scoping review had found nothing, it was an ‘empty review’. I understood that an empty review is a finding in itself but how do you present on an empty review? My research partner (Chris Platts of Future Field) and I had some really good conversations during this time and we really refined our thinking around the topic. We focused on building our case, demonstrating what we do know and focusing on the gaps in the research that we believe need considering in much more detail. Overall the conference experience was amazing, the presentation went well, we received great feedback and made some excellent connections to keep pushing our research forward. Our topic seemed to strike a chord with a number of our audience who had children in their family in football academy training.
Our research sat with the conference title really well — Higher Education: A Place for Activism and Resistance? Our presentation was really a call to action to the HE sector to really see the young men at the centre of our review and to appreciate that they were entering HE in a period of crisis in their lives. Hopefully with the connections we have made we can continue to highlight the need for HEI’s to identify and support these young men whose identity is interwoven with a footballing sector who has just told them they are not good enough.
Final thoughts
Our collective experience at the SRHE conference was a positive one, with the event giving us space to present our own work, hear about innovations in the sector and connect with like minded others. We would recommend attending an academic conference such as this to other students on the EdD programme and encourage Sheffield (and other institutions) to ensure that such opportunities are sufficiently resourced for both students and their supervisors.
