Hi all,
I am in the first year of my PhD and have been told to send of a proposal for an event six months away. I have never written a proposal like this before and wondered how much data is too much for 20 minutes?
I have, at the minute, two ideas for papers:
Examines letters across a 12 year period on a certain war, but I fear this would be too much to get through in 20 minutes
Six to ten primary sources which examine reaction to the publishing of a certain book, which would allow more in-depth analysis and make for, in my opinion, a more exciting paper
I was just wondering what the norm is for papers - I'm sure I won't get picked anyway, but have little idea about how much is too much for 20 minutes. Any guidance appreciated!
I'm actually writing a paper presentation abstract at the moment as well!
The thing that I always have to remind myself is that no one sits there reading/listening to your paper checking to see how well it fits with your proposal. The proposal is really about two things: getting accepted and catching people's attention. For the first thing, the goal is to show that you know what you're doing and that you have a plan to do it. For the second, make sure your topic and approach are clear. Don't fret about how much information you can fit into a 20 minute paper. You're not gonna fit a good examination of 10 sources into 20 minutes, maybe not even 6, and that's without providing the surprising large amount of context you'll need. No matter what, you'll need to select the best, most interesting sources and summarize the rest. I studied 350 ceramic pieces this summer and I'd be surprised if 10 of them were specifically mentioned in any single publication on the work. Pick the most interesting topic, or the one you're bast at, prove that you know you're stuff, and then fit the information to the time slot.