Postember #3 - EAA 2019 (Bern)
Sep. 5th, 2019 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ossamentaThis time of year is the annual conference for the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA). I’ve been to three EAA conferences so far: Helsinki 2012, Glasgow 2015 and Barcelona 2018. This year it’s in Bern, but, following the trend that the observant of you have noticed, I’m not going this year. Mostly money and time, i.e. the lack of. The conference is rather pricey, although compared to some of the big science conference I’ve heard of, it’s practically cheap (!). Which says it all about the inaffordability of academic conferences, where you need faculty/university funding to attend them.
I love the conferences though: interesting and inspiring talks (although sometimes I have to rein in myself before I get too distracted by a new shiny project), old friends and new friends, tempting book stands, fistfuls of free pens and other swag, and can be combined with touristing either before/after the conference, or if you’re short of time, during the conference. Admittedly, if you're touristing during the conference you'll either miss out on good talks, or just doing very local touristing. For Helsinki I had a few extra days before the conference which gave me time to see both Helsinki and Tallinn (day trip). The Glasgow conference trip turned into little over a week’s holiday: Glasgow, Edinburgh and Durham. I had less time in Barcelona, but managed to get two whole days bookending the conference. There are of course things I want to go back and see, but I did see the main touristy things, like Sagrada Familia and Casa Batllo.
The shining light in the middle of all this is that I read the abstract catalogue, and there’s only one talk I felt I needed to go to. Obviously lots of interesting stuff as well, but nothing "important". Definitely a change from both Barcelona, Glasgow and Helsinki where I really wanted either a time machine or a clone of myself as there were so many interesting sessions that clashed. However, if you feel that there is something interesting in this year’s programme, make a note of the session number and have a look on twitter for session hashtags and![[twitter.com profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
eaa2019 .
I love the conferences though: interesting and inspiring talks (although sometimes I have to rein in myself before I get too distracted by a new shiny project), old friends and new friends, tempting book stands, fistfuls of free pens and other swag, and can be combined with touristing either before/after the conference, or if you’re short of time, during the conference. Admittedly, if you're touristing during the conference you'll either miss out on good talks, or just doing very local touristing. For Helsinki I had a few extra days before the conference which gave me time to see both Helsinki and Tallinn (day trip). The Glasgow conference trip turned into little over a week’s holiday: Glasgow, Edinburgh and Durham. I had less time in Barcelona, but managed to get two whole days bookending the conference. There are of course things I want to go back and see, but I did see the main touristy things, like Sagrada Familia and Casa Batllo.
The shining light in the middle of all this is that I read the abstract catalogue, and there’s only one talk I felt I needed to go to. Obviously lots of interesting stuff as well, but nothing "important". Definitely a change from both Barcelona, Glasgow and Helsinki where I really wanted either a time machine or a clone of myself as there were so many interesting sessions that clashed. However, if you feel that there is something interesting in this year’s programme, make a note of the session number and have a look on twitter for session hashtags and