{"id":77841,"date":"2025-08-11T00:03:52","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T04:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=77841"},"modified":"2025-08-11T00:03:52","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T04:03:52","slug":"conference-jitters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/conference-jitters\/","title":{"rendered":"Conference jitters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

You know that feeling, right? It\u2019s two days before your big conference presentation and you\u2019re lying in bed at 3am, staring at the ceiling wondering if anyone will turn up. And if they do, whether you will be able to say what you want to say. Your heart\u2019s racing, your brain won\u2019t stop, and you\u2019re pretty sure you\u2019ve forgotten how to form coherent sentences. Welcome to what feminist scholar\u00a0Yasmin Gunaratnam<\/a>\u00a0calls \u201cpresentation fever\u201d. (And perhaps it\u2019s about time someone gave this particular academic phenomenon a name.)<\/p>\n

I came across Yasmin Gunaratnam\u2019s paper \u201cPresentation fever and podium affects<\/a>\u201d as I was sorting my unread PDFs. Ah, I knew I had this paper somewhere! It felt like she\u2019d been eavesdropping on a recent conversation I\u2019d had with a doctoral researcher about to give a presentation. \u201cWe all feel nervous\u201d, I said. \u201cYes truly. Even people like me who\u2019ve been doing it for a long time.\u201d\u00a0 Gunaratnam, a senior professor, also knows the anxiety-inducing world of academic presenting, where we\u2019re all supposed to be cool, collected professional intellectuals, but behind the scenes we\u2019re held together by caffeine and sheer willpower.<\/p>\n

Podium vertigo<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gunaratnam writes from personal experience with labyrinthitis \u2013 a condition that affects your inner ear and leaves you feeling like the world is constantly tilting. I have this too so I really related to her description. But here\u2019s the thing: she realised that even when her condition improved, the podium still felt like it was swaying. That \u201clonely vertigo of the podium\u201d isn\u2019t just about having an actual medical condition, it\u2019s about the fundamental weirdness of standing up in front of a room full of people and trying to sound together and smart.<\/p>\n

Think about it: we take these incredibly complex ideas that we\u2019ve been wrestling with for months or years, compress them into 15 or 20-minute presentations, and then stand there hoping we don\u2019t completely embarrass ourselves. No wonder we feel dizzy.<\/p>\n

Gunaratnam says we\u2019ve all learned to become \u201cdisciplined cognators\u201d \u2013 basically, academic performing machines. We\u2019re expected to think clearly, speak eloquently, handle questions with grace, and never, ever show that we might be struggling or uncertain about anything. But here\u2019s the rub: all that apparent effortlessness? It\u2019s completely manufactured. That professor who seems to effortlessly field complex questions? They\u2019ve probably given variations of this talk dozens of times. That keynote speaker who sounds so polished? They\u2019ve spent years learning the academic equivalent of stage chatter. The problem is, we seem to rarely talk about this. We pretend that intellectual mastery just happens naturally, when actually it\u2019s the result of countless hours of practice, failure, and yes, anxiety-inducing preparation sessions that keep you up all night.<\/p>\n

Gunaratnam talks about being under \u201csuper-surveillance\u201d, how some bodies are watched more closely, judged more harshly, expected to prove their competence in ways that others aren\u2019t. It\u2019s exhausting to have to be \u201con\u201d all the time, to never be allowed to just be human and imperfect.<\/p>\n

One of the most important points Gunaratnam makes is about how this pressure affects people differently. If you\u2019re already marginalised in academic spaces because of your race, gender, disability status, or class background, the stakes feel even higher. Every stumble becomes evidence that you \u201cdon\u2019t belong.\u201d Every moment of uncertainty gets magnified. Academic conferences are often disasters for anyone who doesn\u2019t fit the neurotypical, able-bodied middle class norm. Standing at a podium for 20 minutes, handling bright lights and loud sounds, processing questions on the spot assumes a very particular kind of body and brain.<\/p>\n

Academic conferences have become part of the academic attention economy. We\u2019re not just sharing ideas anymore; we\u2019re building our \u201cbrand,\u201d accumulating social media followers, and trying to rack up speaking invitations that look good on our CVs. Gunaratnam points out that this turns presentations into commodities. The number of talks you give becomes a metric of success. Getting invited to give a keynote becomes a marker of intellectual status. Meanwhile, all the behind-the-scenes labour that makes conferences possible \u2013 students managing registration, the admin staff coordinating logistics \u2013 becomes invisible.<\/p>\n

Gunaratnam argues that we\u2019ve taken something that should be about collective knowledge-building and turned it into a competitive performance where some people get to be stars while others do the grunt work. I agree.<\/p>\n

What if we did this differently?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gunaratnam doesn\u2019t just diagnose the problem; she asks what it might look like to present \u201cbeyond mastery.\u201d What if we didn\u2019t have to pretend to have all the answers? What if we could be vulnerable, uncertain, still figuring things out? Imagine conferences where it is explicitly OK to admit you don\u2019t know everything. Where the goal isn\u2019t to sound impressive but to think together. Where we make space for different ways of knowing and being, instead of privileging one very narrow model of academic performance.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t just wishful thinking of course. There are people experimenting with different formats such as unconferences, collaborative presentations, events that prioritise accessibility and inclusion. But we need more of this, and we need to stop treating traditional academic presentations as the gold standard.<\/p>\n

Maybe the most radical thing in Gunaratnam\u2019s paper is her suggestion that we should actually listen to our presentation anxiety instead of trying to suppress it. Those racing hearts, sleepless nights, and sweaty palms might be trying to tell us something important about the systems we\u2019re operating in. What if presentation fever isn\u2019t a personal failing but a reasonable response to unreasonable expectations? What if our bodies are registering something our minds haven\u2019t fully processed, that the whole academic conference performance presentation thing is a bit daft? Performative. Exploitative. Perhaps overdue for a rethink \u2026<\/p>\n

Now I\u2019m not saying we should all become paralysed by anxiety (although if you are struggling, please talk to someone). But maybe we could stop treating nervousness as something to overcome and start seeing it as information. What is this feeling trying to tell us about how we do knowledge, how we treat each other, how we could do better, how our ways of doing academia need to change?<\/p>\n

Next time you\u2019re lying awake before a big presentation, remember Gunaratnam\u2019s message: you\u2019re not broken, and you\u2019re definitely not alone. Anxiety might actually be a sign that you care deeply about your work and want to do right by the people you\u2019re researching with and for.<\/p>\n

And maybe, just maybe, we can start having more honest conversations about what it\u2019s really like to be a thinking, feeling human being in academic spaces. Because we could all use a lot less metrics, a little less mastery and a lot more humanity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know that feeling, right? It\u2019s two days before your big conference presentation and you\u2019re lying in bed at 3am, staring at the ceiling wondering if anyone will turn up. And if they do, whether you will be able to say what you want to say. Your heart\u2019s racing, your brain won\u2019t stop, and you\u2019re […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[12417],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-77841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-higher-education","tag-conferences"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nConference jitters - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/conference-jitters\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Conference jitters - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"You know that feeling, right? 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