Ed Longe and Kristin Brig received the School of Humanities and Social Sciences‘ Dean’s Travel Award to attend the Graduate History Association’s conference during the fall, 2015, semester.
By: Ed Longe
The weekend of October 16th-17th , 2015, was personally notable because it was my first venture into the world of history conferences. Hosted by the Graduate History Association (GHA) at the University of Alabama, the conference centered around a theme of power and struggle. The breadth of this theme meant that the organizers were able to bring a wide array of presenters from all across the United States. I benefited from learning about a wide range of research by fellow graduate students. On a more substantive level, the conference’s breadth of focus has challenged me to consider alternate ways of approaching my own research, which will allow me to fully understand my own topic in greater depth.
Kristin Brig (Left) and Ed Longe (Right) at the University of Alabama.
The other significant benefit to attending this conference is that it has put me in contact with individuals, both students and staff, who share my research interests and are working within my field. During the conference, I spent a significant amount of time discussing ways I could improve my own work, most notably by considering the methodology they have used to conduct their research.
By: Kristin Brig
After working on my bachelor’s essay for a year and two months, I found myself in front of an audience at a conference at the University of Alabama to present the outcome of my research. A page of outlined notes and a PowerPoint were my only companions. Together, we gripped our audience and, in twelve minutes, rapidly drew them into the world of nineteenth-century England. At the end of my session, at least two professors came up to me and held me in deep conversation, all too ready to tell me how my presentation intrigued them.
That being said, I left my first conference feeling rather successful.
During the weekend of October 6-7, I attended the University of Alabama’s Graduate History Association’s annual conference on Power and Struggle throughout history, where I presented my paper on disorder in the nineteenth-century English workhouse. Though small in attendee number, the conference gave the graduate students and professors present an opportunity to interact on a more informal level than what would have occurred at a larger conference, where students often become lost in an academic milieu. I discussed a wide variety of topics with historians from various fields, including shipbuilding in the Atlantic world and slave societies in the antebellum South, and each discussion took place within the frame of the conference’s theme, power and struggle. Sharing old ideas and discovering new ideas broadened my intellectual senses, and such networking and intellectual discussion serve a particular usefulness as I go forward in my master’s research. The theme of resistance appears throughout my own work, and so learning how others treat this theme promotes my own understanding of its history. My next work will thus only benefit from the time I spent at this conference, to which I am grateful.