Strategies for creating a welcoming and inclusive atmosphere at the ESEH conference:
- Encourage postgraduate students to ask the first question in presentation panels.
- Provide the audience with 2 minutes ‘thinking time’ to allow everybody to digest what they’ve heard and develop their questions for presenters.
- Please consider and foster diversity when collecting questions from the audience (you do not need to follow the order in which people have asked to speak).
- Ask whether those who do not feel comfortable in English (because it is their 2nd, 3rd or 4th languages) can speak first or if asking questions, write them down for chair to read.
- Please be constructive and encouraging when asking questions – and in your broader interactions with colleagues at the conference. No punching down!
- Ensure that all panel members have opportunities to answer questions/offer comments. This is the most important job of a session chair!!
- Encourage participants for whom this is their first ESEH conference to make themselves known to organizers/hosts – make them feel welcome!
- Perhaps give the audience the opportunity to write their questions down if they feel more comfortable doing so.
- Don’t neglect the online presenter (who is often from the global south because of travel cost/visa restrictions). If hybrid panel, be attentive to the person presenting online unmuting themselves or otherwise signaling they want to contribute.
[guidelines prepared by the ESEH Diversity Committee]