Academia | Nick Byrd, Ph.D.

6 Tips For Academic Presentations

Like many academics, I’ve given dozens of academic presentations and dozens more audio and video interviews in the past few years. After a series of subpar presentations, plenty of feedback, and lots of practice, I now get remarkably positive feedback on these presentations. For example, some professors have advised their graduate students to model their job talks after some of the talks that I have given about reasoning, morality, and religion. In this post, I’ll share the best advice for academic presentations that I have received so far, focusing only on what I have found to be most helpful.

10 Steps For Organizing A Conference or Workshop

Organizing a conference or workshop is time-consuming yet important work. I have organized a handful or international conferences, in-person and online. In this post, I distill my conference organizing experience into a list of 10 steps to make your conference or workshop a success. To find out more about organizing conferences/workshops—especially online—see Online Conferences: Some history, methods & data

New Jobs, New Projects, & What’s Next

I’m lucky to share updates about new jobs, new projects, and what’s happening next on the blog, the podcast, and the YouTube channel. I’ll explain below.

Upon Reflection, Ep. 4: Online Conferences’ History, Methods, and Benefits

In this episode of Upon Reflection, I explain how academics should conference better. More accurately, I read my chapter, “Online Conferences: Some History, Methods, and Benefits” from Right Research: Modelling Sustainable Research Practices in the Anthropocene. This chapter reviews some history of online academic conferencing going back to the 1970s, explain the potential advantages of online conferences, report quantitative and qualitative results from three online conferences, and urge scholars to consider how they can contribute to a more sustainable, inclusive, and emergency resilient academy by replicating these online conferences.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:48 — 63.7MB)

Online Conferences: Some history, methods & data

In the wake of virus outbreaks in multiple countries, many scholars are reconsidering conference plans. As someone that has organized multiple online conferences—sometimes during states of emergency—I have thought a lot about how online conferences can be more resilient to such emergencies. I have also found online conferences to be preferable in many other ways, which I explain in a paper about the history, methods, and findings of online conferences. The paper is ~~currently under review for~~ forthcoming in a collected volume about sustainable academic practices (see my CV). More links to free versions of the chapter are below.

New Talk: Great Minds Do Not Think Alike

I’ll be presenting new data from a pre-registered replication at some conferences in the next few months. The study replicated findings that those with a Ph.D. in philosophy are more reflective, that less reflective philosophers tended towards certain philosophical views, and that some of these reflection-philosophy correlations are partly confoudned with culture, education, gender, or personality.

March 2022 update: these data are in a paper that was accepted by Review of Philosophy & Psychology.

Multi-disciplinary Philosophy PhD Programs

One of my favorite researchers is Chandra Sripada. Sripada is a professor of both philosophy and psychiatry. My research also crosses the humanities-science divide(s). So, I often wonder how to replicate a multi-disciplinary career like Sripada’s. A look at Sripada’s CV reveals a career path involving multiple advanced degrees, internships/residencies, etc. If you are like me, then you (or your partner) might want a more efficient path to a career. In this post, I share advice about how to obtain multi-disciplinary training from philosophy graduate programs. Continue reading Multi-disciplinary Philosophy PhD Programs

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