23.03.2011 11:22

Field report: "A Cultural Meeting of the Minds at the International Journal of Arts & Sciences Conference" written by Lim Hui Ling

Even before the Conference officially opened, we were already meeting with fellow participants on Sunday. On the agenda was a guided walk to Xlendi Bay, a picturesque and laidback seaside resort. By the late afternoon, participants had sufficiently warmed to one another. There was no need for the exchange of name cards. Instead we bought rounds for each other as we watched Carnival festivities parade down the main street in Victoria, the capital of Gozo.

The University of Malta’s Gozo Campus has been organizing the International Journal of Arts and Sciences (IJAS) Conference for the past couple of years during Carnival week on Gozo, one of the two smaller sister islands to the main island of Malta. The format of the IJAS conferences turns academia on its head. The conferences are usually hosted in various storied venues, including Rome, Harvard, Freiburg, Provence and several others. Historic and romantic Prague is a new addition to the 2011 Conference calendar. The location of each Conference is not just a location; it is a place. The significance of place is highlighted throughout the rich cultural programme, which is included, free, for participants. During the Conference, participants were brought on full-day guided tours to the top tourist attractions on Gozo and Malta. With so much on the tour agenda, when the Conference opened, a participant was found asking expectantly, “Would you also be bringing us to the other sister island, Comino?” One might be mistaken that it was a group tour package instead of a Conference.

The Maltese IJAS Conference gets bonus marks for hospitality, as it is timed to tie in with Carnival week. The cultural programme was in such high demand that the organizers had to charter additional coaches, and moreover decided to pack the conference sessions into two days, leaving the rest of the week for informal networking and for excursions.

The IJAS Conferences start from the premise that the learning gained by researchers at conferences is best gleaned through informal interactions with international colleagues. IJAS Conferences are multi-disciplinary. It is the perfect setting for stimulating debate amongst academics from different backgrounds. The Conference programme is not pre-determined but formed as papers are accepted. The result is an interesting array of presentations followed by publication of a diverse list of final work in IJAS’ double-blind refereed publication. Joseph Azzopardi, the organizer of the Malta Conference, shared that the multi-disciplinary setting has worked very well. From experience, academics from a different field tend to ask more basic questions, which can stimulate new perspectives and ideas for the researcher sharing his or her work.

By challenging the usual formal setting for academic conferences, this multicultural meeting was jovial, relaxed, and as a result, participants were more encouraged to stay and discuss with each other in depth on papers that were presented. This is especially valuable for young academics, as they share their research with each other to gain important feedback, and also to get to know potential future collaborators for joint research.

Another bonus point for hospitality goes to the food. Throughout the Conference days, delicious Maltese dishes were served together with fresh fruit and beverages. For the uninitiated, the Maltese kitchen has over the years inherited a mix of Sicilian and Arabic influences, not to mention British, as the latter were there until 1979. On the table, one can find a rich spread of hearty country food, including meaty soups and rabbit, to grilled seafood fresh from the sea. For snacks, the pastizza, a kind of flaky pastry filled with ricotta cheese or mashed peas, is ever prevalent. There are also plenty of sweets such as treacle rings, fig pies and nougat for anytime of the day.

This year the Conference attracted participants from over 40 countries, including Japan, Russia, Kuwait, Canada, the UK, Israel, Romania, Portugal, Algeria and more. It was fertile ground for international networking. The local excursions were also not only enriching for each participant individually but facilitated the forging of many new friendships amongst them. The Conference proved that even in this age of sophisticated high-speed communications technology and globalization, or perhaps because of these developments, nothing can quite match the quality of a direct face-to-face meeting and a real felt sense of place by being on location. The Conference was very stimulating in many ways. It broadened my knowledge of cross-disciplinary topics of research. But more importantly, I enjoyed the festive Carnival atmosphere, the informal interactions with other researchers and the discovery of Malta over the few days.

For more information and dates of other IJAS Conferences click here!