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Home • Conferences & Activities • Annual Conference Concept |
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The annual conferences are the primary occasion on which Demcon members (and others) come together to pursue their common theoretical interests. They are genuine opportunities for conversation and theoretical reflection, promoting, to the maximum extent possible, dialogue over the course of the conference and beyond. Each conference focuses on a single, relatively precise theoretical question, to which all formal presentations must relate. This will be a genuine question on which there is no party-line. Each conference considers this question in a specific empirical context, so that the discipline of grappling with that context prompts reflection and reconsideration. The intention is to have context and theory react intensely to each other, so that new light is shed on both. We use a number of devices to prompt discussion: an issues paper in advance of the conference; the ordering of sessions to promote a developing conversation; generous time for discussion; closing reflections; a post-conference publication. Participants will include both theorists and scholars of the context. The topic of a conference may not align with members’ individual expertise, but we hope that the benefits of focused dialogue will much outweigh this disadvantage. We hope people attend and participate in the discussion even when the conference does not fall foursquare within their own work. By doing so across a structured array of questions and contexts, we hope to build a fruitful, thought-provoking and empirically informed dialogue.
Click here for information on the 2006 Workshop. |
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