By Nick Williams, Federica Previtali and Virginia Calabria
(with collaboration by Betül Çimenli, Klara Skogmyr Marian and Veronica Gonzalez Temer)
Writing from Sicily, Tampere, and Berlin, FOMO does not even start describing how we feel about our colleagues being all together in Brisbane. However, we can catch a bit of the vibe only by looking at Twitter! We then decided to virtually jump on the 66 bus with Jonathan Potter and follow our colleagues around in this action-packed event! We are going to be your off-site delegates for the Day 1 blog! 😉
Fig.1 Off-site #ICCA2023 delegates on their (virtual) way to Brisbanne
Sources: Bus 66: https://twitter.com/JonathanPotter6/status/1673950639876100096;
Conference slide: https://twitter.com/icca2023/status/1674567408709931008/photo/1
Off-slide delegates on Zoom and montage: Virginia Calabria
Soon the bus stops and here we are at Day 1 of the 6th International Conference on Conversation Analysis, hosted at The University of Queensland in Brisbane (Meanjin), Australia, where the vibe is decidedly exciting (yes, our colleagues who are there do seem to like the adjective “excited” and their excitement is contagious even from afar!). The conference, being held for the first time in 5 years, is the largest regular gathering of Conversation Analysts. It is a global event that hosts delegates from all over the world, at any stage of academic career, all brought together by one thing: Conversation Analysis! Postponed from its originally planned dates in 2022 (due to the pandemic), it is no surprise that there is a full house and lots of excitement about seeing fellow CA scholars in person again after years of working in relative isolation.
The Workshops
The first thing to do is ask our colleagues (after: “How was the jet lag if you travelled there?”): How were the workshops? With 24 workshops offered in the span of just three days, some participants report feeling a little overwhelmed. With workshop topics ranging from CA fundamentals like sequence organization (Geoffrey Raymond), repair (Ann Weatherall), and epistemics (Ilana Mushin) to more applied and boundary-pushing topics like multimodality (Lorenza Mondada), psychotherapy (Anssi Peräkylä), coding and quantification (Giovanni Rossi), and longitudinal studies of social interaction (Simona Pekarek Doehler), the three-day workshop series presented a panoramic view of CA in 2023, for both beginners and advanced practitioners alike. For the full set of workshops see the program here.
The spirit of collaboration really comes through in what appears to have been a “stimulating and collegial exchange” (the official ICCA23 account tweets). Our colleagues, Twitter tells us, felt: creative, stimulated, great, amazing, excited, interactive, thought-provoked, grateful, explorative, and appreciative of “going back to the basics” (Bogdana).
Certainly one highlight is that, for #ILEMCA scholars, the whole world is full of collectable data – even during a workshop! Bogdana sums it up nicely for us: “Conversation analysts as archeologists ‘digging’ their way into the data”. In any case, when in doubt: “dead cats are the best thing for wind”, Søren reminds us.
Fig.2 Conversation analysts in “action”, during Tanya Stivers’ workshop
Source: picture by Betül Çimenli
Opening the conference
The last day of workshops ends with an opening: the conference chair Ilana Mushin welcomes the global audience. We quote Betül’s words to catch the feeling in the audience: “What a remarkable way of opening a conference and honouring aboriginal roots of Australia!” Off to an amazing start, reminding us of one of Goffman’s lessons: social interaction is made and perpetrated through the local cultural practices. And – we can add – what a gift for #EMCA scholars to assist in real life to this awesome cultural expression!
Figg.3-4 Full house for opening ceremony by Ilana Mushin and aboriginal dance
Sources: picture of the audience by Klara Skogmyr Marian;
Aboriginal dance: https://twitter.com/BetulCimenli/status/1673962945964015617/video/1
Without skipping a beat, we hop aboard the CA-bus that brings us straight to the local koala sanctuary: when in Australia, whether it is koalas, or kangaroos, or giant spiders, a visit to the local ecosystem is strongly preferred! Looking at our colleagues’ faces we can tell that nothing puts you in the mood for academic talks quite like a koala’s hug. Veronica tells us they were so fluffy and lovely that you’d even forget jet lag for a minute!
Fig.5 A bus packed of CA people on their ways to koalas’ hugs
Source: https://twitter.com/mncantarutti/status/1673897221354573827/photo/1
Keynote 1: Vulnerability of the Self in Social Interaction
Feeling truly welcomed and revved up now, we follow our fellow interactional analysts and end up in a packed room where we find the first fascinating and thought provoking keynote by Anssi Peräkylä on “Vulnerability of the Self in Social Interaction”. Anssi Peräkylä is Academy Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland. Peräkylä presented his current work, which focuses on the self in social interaction, and in particular, on the intersection of interactional practices and narcissistic personality traits. We hear from Sarah White that “Peräkylä’s aim was to examine moments where the interactional recognition of the self is challenged. In these moments, a revision of self description is a typical response”. We are sitting next to Jonathan Potter who ponders whether there is “an elision of grammatical, interactional, and ontological notions of self?”. On the next seat is Alexa Hepburn who comments that the talk raises lots of contentious issues and potential problems for CA.
According to Peräkylä, it is difficult to think about interaction without orientation to self. The self is an elusive notion, and a possible way of branching out in CA is through a consideration of self, as Sarah White reports. Even from home, we can tell the talk inspired many rousing discussions at the coffee break!
Fig.6 Keynote by Anssi Peräkylä on “Vulnerability of the Self in Social Interaction”
Source: picture byVeronica Gonzalez Temer
Day 1 Panels (at The International Conference of Conflicting Appointments)
The day continues with so:: many great panels: “It’s so hard to choose which session to go to – so many interesting talks!” reports Sarah White. We feel you Sarah! Even choosing what to say in this report based on all your input and comments was hard.
In just the first day, the conference hosted 25 parallel panels (of the overall 38!!!) with over 100 presenters, leading scholars in the #ILEMCA fields.
What we can gather from Twitter and the insights shared by our on-site colleagues, Day 1 topics ranged from dual embodiment in virtual reality to the link between interactional histories and in-situ interactions, from the analysis of the “unsaid” to the review of the state of art and possible way forward for established fields, such as institutional and health care encounters, from the contributions of CA to the understanding of social issues, such as racism, to new emergent categories in interaction. Moreover, talks covered not only different types of social interactions but also many languages! The field is vibrant and active, and more and more interesting discussions are awaiting in the coming days!
While day 1 ends in some parts of the world, day 2 starts in Brisbane. And what better way to start than all together? At 8:00 in the morning Australia some ICCA delegates are on Zoom with some of us off-site. We talk about FOMO, and connection and especially about first impressions about the event. Iris Nomikou tells us that finally meeting people felt like being with family; Veronica tells us that it was a cognitive effort, but all worth it, and everything is giant and green, while birds try to steal your croissant (or look at you menacingly, is that right Søren?)! Virgi asks about the first plenary and Yumei expresses how awesome it is to relate CA to broader ideas out there: “Self is in the hands of others” is Yumei’s take-home message from Anssi. And Marina goes the extra mile (many miles actually!): she brings Virgi and Ana around showing us the campus, the places where the magic happens. The best part is waving around from a screen and seeing smiley, friendly faces waving back at Marina’s words: “I’m on Zoom, say hi!”.
Thanks to our virtual tour guides: keep posting!
Having started this virtual trip on bus 66 with Potter, we reach our final destination there in that room with him again. Since choosing among the many workshops, talks, data sessions, events, our colleagues’ tweets #ICCA2023 was not easy, we focused mostly on what we missed from afar: the emotions that ICCA generated, the vibe! Through the tons of pics shared and presence of social media, we all felt really there! We really perceived the excitement and were happy to report it and share it even from afar. This proved to us the power of community: we are beautifully connected, no matter where geography brings us. And now we leave the bus 66 to our fellow delegates for day 2: have an exciting trip!
Fig.7 Catching the emotions and the vibe of #ICCA2023 with Jonathan Potter
Source: https://twitter.com/BogdanaHuma/status/1674306665531981825?s=20
Awesome!