An aside about talks

On Wednesday I presented my 27th talk of the year, 24 of which were invited presentations. My three talks this week takes the grand total of invited talks to 151 (since 1995) and being a bit of a data geek I thought I’d take a look at their breakdown (I have all this data because for the last 13 years I have had to do detailed six monthly submissions on just about everything you think an academic might get up to). They’re split into 102 at conferences, workshops, symposia; 49 at departmental seminars. They’ve been delivered in 19 countries to events organised by 31 disciplines, plus general interdisciplinary and general public events. In addition, I’ve also been an invited discussant 38 times.

Interestingly, to me at least, is that my work seems to have more traction/impact outside of Geography (my discipline) than inside. 28% (42/151) of my invited talks are in Geography, only one of which is a keynote/plenary talk delivered at this year’s Digital Geographies conference at the Open University. Somewhat oddly then I’m much more likely to be asked to give keynote/plenary outside of my discipline than within. The remainder of the invited Geography talks are at symposium where all/most papers are invited or departmental seminars (28/42).

Here’s how the talks breakdown by country and discipline.

Ireland (71), England (31), USA (14), Germany (6), Canada (5), N. Ireland (5), Scotland (4), Belgium (2), Slovenia (2), Switzerland (2), Denmark (1), Turkey (1), Italy (1), Armenia (1), Netherlands (1), Japan (1), New Zealand (1), Australia (1), Spain (1)

Geography (42), General public (22), Interdis academic (14), Planning (13), Sociology (6), Architecture (5), Cartography (4), Computer Sci (3), Communications (3), Regional studies (3), Education (3), Politics (3), Law (2), English (2), Economics (2), Philosophy (2), Statistics (2), Digital Humanities (2), Engineering (2), Health Studies (2), Psychology (2), Information Sci (1), International Studies (1), Media Studies (1), Disability Studies (1), Cultural Studies (1), Business studies (1), Public Policy (1), Art (1), Area Studies (1), Equality Studies (1)