Advice for Younger Scholars: Being Interesting

Mark Graber

(I am doing a number of posts for Richard Albert's Global Summit on advice for younger scholars.  This is the first.  Happy for feedback)

One of the most wonderful experiences at conferences is being recognized by younger scholars. Most senior scholars, like me, have weak egos. We are thrilled when a younger person introduces themselves to us by noting that they remember a talk we gave or an article we wrote. So for my and our sake, do not be shy. Say hello.

Most of us, after a bit of conversation on our favorite subject – ourselves – will have the decency to ask you something to the effect, “what are you working on,” or “what are you presenting.” Too often, I/we get the distressing answer, “nothing that would interest you.” Why?

One very disturbing answer is that what you are working on does not really interest you. You are doing this project because you think you need to do these sorts of projects to get a job, be promoted, or get a better job. Avoid that path. The odds are you will not be successful doing work you are not interested in. And even if you are successful in the sense of getting a job, the odds are you will be unable to get off the path of working on projects you are not interested in. Life is too short and all of you are too capable to spend your lives doing projects that do not interest you. In my next series of observations, I will talk more directly about selling the project that interests you but you fear does not interest the world. For the time being, I am going to assume that you are genuinely interested in what you are doing, that you were just being polite when you told me/us what you were doing is not interesting.

But you have already defined yourself as an interesting person (after all, you are interested in me/us!). You have a foot in the door. I’m going to some panel at 3:00pm on Friday. Why not yours? Make the case!

Your challenge as an early career scholar is to interest others in what you are doing. There is a market for Kim Lane Scheppele or Ran Hirschl’s latest thoughts, even if they are writing on foxhunting in 17th century England. There was no market for my works when I was an early career scholar, except for my grandmother, who could be counted to show everything I wrote to her bridge club and my father who could be counted for a critique. Early career scholars must first interest people before they are listened to or read. This is a more difficult challenge than you think. For most of our education, we have no need to interest other people. My dissertation advisor was paid to read my dissertation. Whether I got my PhD depended on whether I managed to demonstrate adequate knowledge of a subject matter and could say something original, not whether my advisors had to have multiple cups of a caffeinated beverage in order to stay awake when reading my materials. As graduate students we are never in a position of having to convince professors to read our article rather than someone else’s, or a senior professor to attend our panel rather than another panel (or just chat with friends in the hallway or book exhibit). That is one of the new challenges of being an early career professional.

So, you just run into a senior professor whose work you like in the hall or in the lobby of your hotel and this person has just asked you what you are working on. The good news is that there is no bad outcome. Senior Professor is going to a random panel at 3:00pm on Friday. If what you say does not seem interesting, you are no worse off because Senior Professor probably was not going to attend your panel in any case. But there is a winning outcome. Most of us are here to attend panels and to meet exciting young scholars we did not previously know. So this is your chance in 1-2 minutes of increasing attendance at your panel.

Step one. Communicate your enthusiasm. Why do you think your project is important? Why should everyone in the field think your project is important? Communicate that. “I am presenting a paper that gives a new angle of labor politics in France. I want to show that scholars are overlooking how the decline of labor is contributing to the erosion of constitutional democracy in France, and I suspect throughout the world. If we want democracy, we have to have labor unions.” Or “I am writing on local elections in Chile. Everyone pays attention to the big national bruhaha over the constitution, but I can show that for Chileans, and I suspect most people, what really matters is the local. When we focus on the national, we miss what is moving the constitutional needle in Chile and elsewhere.” And so on. For a great many Senior Professors I know (think of my friend Sandy Levinson), almost any idea can interest us if conveyed with appropriate enthusiasm and context. Making people excited about what you are excited about is one of the great joys of academics. Sometimes, as in my example of local elections in Chile, your excitement challenge is explaining why anyone ought to be interested in what you are researching.

Sometimes as in a project on abortion rights in the United States, your excitement challenge is explaining why you are not merely repeating well-worn arguments. So you want to tell me that even though I have never thought about bureaucrats in southeast Asia, your research really does have implications for the big issues in the public law fields. And even though the debate over same-sex marriage is suffering from diminished intellectual returns, your analysis of the movement in southern Africa suggests a global south approach largely unknown among the usual suspects.

Keep your focus on engagement when you present. Do not try to present as much of your paper as you can in your allotted time. That will likely create confusion and possibly be boring. Your goal is to convince the audience that you are saying something important. Your project is interesting and important. You have done or are doing the research necessary to have interesting and important things to say about this interesting and important subject. This means concentrating on the strongest and most interesting parts of your project, leaving other details for later. Remember, your goal is engaging your audience, not getting a good grade. You cannot engage a scholarly audience if your work or research design is shoddy, but your job when presenting is to convince your audience you have something original and important to say about an important matter, not to convince them you are 100% right.

So, how do you become an engaging presenter? In one sense, I do not know. What works for A may not work for B. Consider my dean or Richard Albert, both of whom are terrific presenters. I watch them. One of their very good habits is that they always move with purpose (did you notice that the microphone never moves when Richard is speaking, so his voice does not appear to go in and out). I am very poorly coordinated. My movements are jerky. My goal when I speak is to prevent distracting movements, not to move with purpose. How well coordinated are you? If you can’t wait to get on the dance floor after (or even during) a conference, consider ways that purposive movements might work for you. If you were banned from dance class after two lessons, try another tactic.

Go to lots of panels, particularly on topics that might not fully excite you. Always ask yourself why you were engaged or not engaged by different speakers. How did their movements affect their presentation? How did the modulation of their voice affect their presentation? How did they use stories? How did they present their argument? Which of their best habits might you borrow? Which of their bad habits might also be your habits? I have trouble with speakers who think a presentation is a stream of consciousness. But too often, I can lapse into a stream of consciousness. Seeing speakers be ineffective helps me guard against that bad habit in my presentations. I was almost 40 when I gave a talk that just felt right. That became my scholarly voice. Other friends are still experimenting. You should experiment as well.

Big conferences are great opportunities. You have opportunities to engage people when presenting, when asking questions, in the hall, and in the hotel lobby. Never miss a chance to be interesting. Practice with your friends. Practice with your advisor. Practice on me. If you engage, SUCCESS, and, if not, you are merely one of the hundreds of people at the conference. Downsides are limited. Take advantage of those opportunities. Experiment with different approaches to presenting your project. Experiment with different styles of presentation until you hit upon the style that just feels right. And as you experiment, you will start to build a cohort, which is the subject of another conversation on interdisciplinary scholarship, in particular, and building your scholarly cohort more generally.