Just as I’m getting ready to go (along with hundreds of other academics from across the globe) to the ERES conference in Cergy-Pontoise, France. I read this piece yesterday questioning the raison d’etre (practising my very limited French :)) of academic conferences.
in this post Seth Wynes argues that beyond a certain level there is no clear relationship between the amount of travel undertaken by academics and the quality of their research in terms of productivity and the production of high quality papers: And, that as universities face increasing demands to reduce greenhouse emissions, they should look to ways to manage academic travel more efficiently and equitably.
This won’t be welcome news to some of my colleagues. But it does niggle at us. I remember it being grandly announced at an ARES conferences – which nearly everyone had flown to – that they were going to go paperless for environmental reasons.
Among other things, conferences are part networking, part learning, part holiday, part social occasion, part deadline to deliver and, for me, part cycling trip. I know a few very well-known real estate academics who cycle a lot – so there may be a positive correlation but rarely is a correlation perfect, nevermind causation…
GetRealPat 