In our newest “how can we help you?” thread, a reader asks:

I’m a PhD candidate working in early modern philosophy who has recently received about a dozen rejections from early modern conferences and no acceptances. Several of the CfPs were exclusively for graduate students, although others were also open to early career academics. I’m trying to figure out where I went wrong and why I’ve been having so much trouble getting into conferences. My main thoughts are that I’m not working on very trendy topics, that I’m not engaging with enough very recent secondary literature, or that I’m just not doing enough of a good job on the abstracts. Any suggestions for how to diagnose the issue?

I guess I think it’s probably hard to say without knowing more, but I guess I would advise the OP to give the papers/abstracts they’ve submitted to a few people in their subfield who are successful at getting into conferences. They might see something that the OP is missing.

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

Originally appeared on The Philosophers’ Cocoon Read More