Foreign PhD candidates and US conferences

[SomethingNice]

Dear Grad café members,

I just discovered this forum and I'm thrilled!!

I am a PhD candidate in English Reformation and Counter Reformation Studies in France and I'm interested in participating in US conferences and/ colloquia.

I'm actually wondering what the 'politics' (policy?) are in the US as far as PhD candidates are concerned.

Here, we're very much encouraged to publish as much as we can and sign up for conferences while we're enrolled as students.

We're done with the program in 4 to 5 years usually (except for sciences, they finish in three years) and in order to get the national accreditation to become 'an associate professor', we need to have a full résumé.

I'm wondering if it's frowned upon to sign up for conferences -as a contributor- while you're still a student.

Is it worth sending my abstract to a given conference or will it end up in the bin?

If anyone had ideas, suggestions...I'd truly appreciate!!

Thanks a bunch

SomethingNice

Edited March 9, 2011 by SomethingNice

[newms]

It's perfectly ok to submit papers to US conferences as a student (even for foreign students)- in fact, it's encouraged and expected in most fields. In some fields, Ph.D candidates help with organizing workshops and with reviewing papers for conferences, so student participation is definitely generally encouraged. I've seen foreign students submitting and getting papers accepted in my field. Perhaps you can look up the top conferences in your field and see what policies they have for submitting papers. Good luck!

Edited March 9, 2011 by newms

[SomethingNice]

Hi !

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly!

I'll look into it, then.

Cheers for now