IALIC 2025 > Research-out-of-box

Research-out-of-box: Crossing academic boundaries and hierarchies

Hi, I’m Yvette Yitong Wang, a PhD student at University of Warwick, the postgraduate representative at the IALIC committee. As the convenor of the Research-out-of-the-box exhibition, I invite you, researchers at all stages, no matter you are a first year PhD student or a professor, to submit your entry to the exhibition!

Why you should consider participating in the Research-out-of-box exhibition at an academic conference?

"I just started my PhD. I don't feel confident nor qualified to present at conferences……"

"My research is still in its early stage. I don't really have any findings to share at conferences……"

"My research analysis is inconclusive. I don't think it's complete enough to be accepted by conferecnes……"

"I feel like I need to read more, analyze more, and write more before it’s ‘conference-worthy’……" 

These concerns may sound familiar to many early-stage researchers. When I first started my PhD, it was frustrating to realize that at most academic conferences or research events, junior researchers were mostly just expected to take a back seat and listen, not share. And I get it —  novice researchers, especially junior PhD students, might not have fully developed ideas or completed results that seem "worthy" of a conference stage. But does that really mean they have less insights to offer? Does that really mean they are at a "lower status" in knowledge exchange? Does that really mean ideas in the formative stages are less worthy being heard or discussed by the wider academic community? 

Of course, no conferences intentionally exclude junior PhD students by principle, but I figured that work-in-progress research and ideas in its nature often don’t fit into those "finished" formats that conferences expect. Typical presentation formats and academic presentation genres establish rules of game for participation in knowledge exchange and research conversations. They function as forms of academic gatekeeping,  structurally and institutionally limiting what kind of ideas and whose ideas can be included. To genuinely welcome researchers and knowledges at all stages, it seems necessary to expand the very forms and ways in which research and ideas are presented and communicated and to create new dialogic spaces that allow us to cross hierarchies and boundaries in action beyond slogan. 

The desire to share my insights as a junior PhD student beyond my small circle and the unsatisfaction with the lack of such opportunities drove me to design "Research-out-of-the-box" when I worked as a part-time PGR development officer for Doctoral College at my university (University of Warwick). It was a research showcase event in a highly interactive playful and creative way. It took a combination of forms of interactive poster presentation, art exhibition and festival fair. Participants can walk around, look at what's on display, exchange freely with the presenters and other viewers, and participate in small-scale activities. It was a beautiful and inspiring to see how creative research presentations can be when there were spaces for such things. Amazing displays I saw at the event, such as a film of dance performance, to a giant colourful web of birth trauma and intersectionality, to a photo wall transforming the mundane perceptions of ‘space’, to a fun personality test like “what judge would you be”, to papers, pens and stickers that offer viewers to map their own trace on campus and reflect on the relationship between place and identity, to music samples and a wall collecting viewers' ideas about 'what is music', to a board game on Renaissance material culture.

By Jenna Nilson, University of Warwick 

Language Potrait Instruction, by Jenna Nilson, Universty of Warwick

By Marianna Patrick, University of Warwick 

Besides the concern for including early-stage researchers, the format of research-out-of-the-box exhibition seems especially suitable to the field(s) of langauage and intercultural communication where dialogue, multimodality, interculturality, translanguaging, and epistemic plurality are valued and celebrated and where language and cultural ideologies, communicative and discursive practices, and power differentials in social interaction are problematized. Then, shouldn't we practice what we are preaching by innovating how we exchange knowledge and expanding the boundary of academic conference spaces?  

We invite you to step outside the conventional and join us in shaping a more inclusive, dynamic, and engaging academic conference experience. Submit your ideas, showcase your creativity, and be part of a movement that challenges academic hierarchies. Let’s push boundaries in and through creative presentation practice together!