Our new meeting structure is unfamiliar, so here are some ideas for how new sessions type can work.

Regularly Scheduled Programming

Traditional meeting sessions are organized by Programming Units at the regional and national level. These units tend to be organized around research subdisciplines or thematic research topics and consist of chairs and/or steering committees who evaluate paper proposals. This format leads to stable (good) but static (less good) session types that encourage feast-or-famine planning, presenting, and moving on. Because the primary goal of our new regional structure is to facilitate work throughout the year, sessions at our annual meetings should reflect that. Here are some ideas for sessions from our organizers and members. Feel free to propose one of these directly, or come up with something totally new!

Research Sessions

  • State of the Field Workshops
    • A common challenge cited by our colleagues is staying current with the field after graduate training. Sessions designed specifically around assessing new work in a research unit's subfield can foster research engagement across career stages.
  • Conversations with Academic Press Editors
    • Acquisitions editors for presses often have difficulty accessing scholars who are not already professionally connected with their presses. Junior scholars, on the other hand, often find the process of communicating with acquisitions editors daunting or mysterious. Connecting these editors to scholars working in the field will unburden both sides of this essential professional practice.
  • Organizing Special Issues for Journals
    • Editors of academic journals with inconsistent submission volume often appreciate proposals for special issues where authors help solicit and organize submissions on a theme. These are often also more appealing than producing full edited volumes as they serve a similar purpose. Research units could collaborate around producing these special issues with input from journal editors.

Community Sessions

  • Conversations with Community Stakeholders
    • Planning once-a-year sessions where community members can collaborate academic professionals will likely be one of the primary activities of the Community Units. These types of meetings have been successful in regions like the Southwest where civic life non-profits and local religious groups have worked with scholars of religion to develop projects together.
  • Legal and Policy Primers
    • Religion scholars usually have no avenue for understanding the impact of their work on legal cases (working as expert witnesses, for instance) or in policy deliberation. Inviting lawyers or regional policy makers to have conversations on how academic expertise could be fruitfully integrated into policymaking would further the goals of the society and its members.
  • Collaboration with Journalists
    • The national society is already dedicated to collaborating with journalists, but there is little corresponding work at the regional level, where it is likely to also have significant impact. Inviting journalists on the religion beat for regional publications would foster a better information ecosystem across the region.
  • Pedagogy Workshops
    • While pedagogy and teaching are tied to our research in important ways, they are often skills that cross the disciplinary boundaries that form Research Units. As such, Community Units and Coworking Units can be effective at planning pedagogy and teaching workshops of various kinds.

Coworking Sessions

  • Celebrations of Milestones
    • As units who focus largely on collaboration throughout the year, getting together to celebrate accomplished milestones would be effective at building community.
  • Job Market Workshops
    • Job searches often include working with people from many different subfields, which will also reflect the diversity of healthy Working Units. Therefore, it makes sense for Working Units to help run professionalization workshops for job seekers.
  • Coworking Unit Inauguration/Introduction
    • It might be easier to start and join a coworking unit when we're all together at the regional meeting. To that end, if members would like to form a new unit at the meeting, they can propose an introduction session to find new members.
  • Pedagogy Workshops
    • While pedagogy and teaching are tied to our research in important ways, they are often skills that cross the disciplinary boundaries that form Research Units. As such, Coworking Units and Community Units can be effective at planning pedagogy and teaching workshops of various kinds.