What happens at a scientific conferences?
How have they exchanged knowledge and shaped expertise?
What forms of sociability have developed in these meetings, what rituals have been performed?
The audio project takes as a starting point the voices of a group of historians, studying scientific conferences as public spaces. From the beginnings of conferencing to the digital turn during the pandemic, conferencing will be demystified by the atmospheric sound of coffee breaks, the sound of the recurring dramaturgy of conferences.

AN AUDIO FEATURE BY Mariana Castillo Deball and Nils Reinke-Dieker
FEATURING
Jenny Beckman, Charlotte Bigg, Laura Forster, Georgiana Kotsou, Thomas Mougey, Jessica Reinisch, Geert Somsen, Sven Widmalm, Waqar Zaidi
SOUND DESIGN
Matthias Schubert
SCRIPT
Kevin Napier
NARRATORS
Deborah Balm, Mark Rossman
This audio feature is part of the HERA funded, collaborative project The Scientific Conference: A Social, Cultural and Political History bringing together historians from Birkbeck College, The Centre Alexandre Koyré (Paris) and from the universities of Uppsala, Maastricht and Amsterdam.

Conference Around the Clock

The last day of the conference.
A hotel that has bustled with presentations, informal talks, cocktail parties and excursions.
The attendees gather one last time.
A photographer prepares.
The traditional group photo. 
Who is featured front and center?
Who is allowed to drift into the shadows at the edges.
Who is even invited to appear in the photo…let alone invited to attend.

Episode 4 – Inclusion / Exclusion

Every conference becomes, in essence, its own unique self-contained community.  They are complex structures that, even at the earliest planning stage, require extensive preparation and thorough guidelines to facilitate the shared goals of those gathered.

What can be accomplished by conferences, committees or conventions? What should meetings cost? Who should call the members together? When should meetings be called? When and where should they be held? How far ahead should plans be made?

Episode 3 – Community

Over time, how and where people come together for a conference has changed. The means of communication and space they gather in is almost as important as what is discussed.

Episode 2 – Public Space

The start of the conference.
The smell of coffee and freshly cleaned floors.
The attendees gather.
They search for any familiar faces.
A board contains the schedule of lectures, panels and symposiums.
The day’s theme: how it all began.

This project is about the history of conferences and about what conferences are about, what they do, why they are important in scientific and technical matters. 
And, of course, it takes its origin in a conference.

Episode 1 – Conferencing on Conferences

Conferencearoundtheclock