By Emily Benson
Twenty-five IPinCH students and emerging scholars participated in a day-long workshop on Thursday, November 6th in Vancouver, in advance of the IPinCH Fall Gathering.
The workshop was organized by IPinCH Fellow Robin R.R. Gray, in collaboration with IPinCH students. The day was organized into three sessions that addressed themes of interest to students: a publication workshop; an extended lunch that provided students/emerging scholars and senior IPinCH scholars an opportunity to meet and talk in a casual setting; and a professional development workshop.
In the morning, Mitch Allen led a workshop on Getting a Journal Article Published. Mitch is the publisher of Left Coast Press, an IPinCH partner organization, and has extensive experience with publishing and editing journals and books. His workshop focused on strategies for academic journal and book publishing. Mitch explained what editors are looking for in journal articles, and offered suggestions for how to approach editors about submitting articles. He emphasized the importance of researching journals and of identifying the best audiences for one’s work. He highlighted the value of considering your audience and strategies for communicating to that audience, and discussed the importance of developing good titles and abstracts that are tailored to specific audiences and journals. Mitch also discussed how to present research in a way that fits with what specific journals are looking for. He also talked about the peer review process, how to address reviewers’ comments, and what is entailed in revising and re-submitting. As a workshop activity, we were asked to think about our own recent research projects and consider how we might produce articles or other products from them. We developed titles for possible articles from our research, considered the journals that we would submit each article to, and identified the intended audience for the articles.
A highlight of the day was the Lunch and Learn workshop that paired participants with established scholar mentors. As mentors, we had Mitch and Carol Ellick (who led the afternoon workshop), Catherine Bell, Julie Hollowell, Brian Noble, Joe Watkins, and John Welch. This was an opportunity for students and IPinCH mentors to talk in a relaxed environment over lunch. Discussions centered on such topics as academic careers, community-based research, maintaining work/life balance, publishing, and balancing commitments to communities with academic commitments. The lunch was a really enjoyable part of the day and gave us a chance to get to know one another, have interesting conversations, and share stories and advice.
In the afternoon session, IPinCH Associate Carol Ellick presented a workshop on professional development entitled Get Hired! Twelve Tips for Getting a Job in Anthropology. Carol is the founder and Director of Archaeological and Cultural Education (ACE) Consultants, and (with Joe Watkins) recently published The Anthropology Graduate's Guide: From Student to a Career (Left Coast Press, 2011). She has over 30 years of experience working in cultural resource management in a variety of settings. Carol’s workshop was focused on developing tools to transition from student-hood to a career in anthropology. She discussed employment statistics in anthropology, the applicability of anthropological skills to a variety of jobs, how to ‘decode’ job advertisements, and how to identify and relate knowledge and skills in job applications.
Overall, the event was incredibly informative and engaging, and we are grateful to have had the opportunity to learn from, and share with, one another. On behalf of the participants and conference organizers, our thanks to Mitch and Carol and all of the mentors for supporting and encouraging IPinCH students and emerging scholars. And of course, a big thank you to Robin, for doing such an excellent job organizing this workshop!
Photo: IPinCH students and scholars chat over lunch (photo: K. McLaughlin).
