What is a colloquium?

September 1, 2016 5:54 PM

I have been asked to run a 'colloquium' at an Australian university. I have never been to a colloquium at any university. I need to know what usually happens in one. Interested from a student perspective as well as the perspectives of those that have delivered/organized/participated in one. What makes a good one? What makes a bad one?
posted by MT to Education (8 answers total)

Some places use "colloquium" to mean "a day full of talks" and other places use "colloquium" to mean "around one speaker a month throughout the semester." Do you have a sense of which they mean?
posted by karbonokapi at 6:39 PM on September 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

In my experience a colloquium is a mini-conference, with students and staff delivering papers, workshops and lectures to an audience of their peers. It's less formal than a conference, with a broad range of topics and approaches derived from the work that students are doing.

I've found them very valuable as a student for practice giving academic papers and presentations, and for hearing other ideas from my cohort and colleagues.

In the colloquia I've been to, there's usually a few hours of papers and discussion, broken up by coffee and snacks. It's fairly informal, and not as combative as a conference panel can be.
posted by prismatic7 at 6:40 PM on September 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I've presented at/participated in a couple of these. As karbonokapi and prismatic7 have pointed out, "colloquium" is a fluid term. In my experience:

1) It can be a seminar-style environment rather than a conference environment (a relatively limited number of people with much higher expectations for participation).

2) By the same token, the readings are more likely to have been done in advance--if there are guest presenters, their work will have been circulated prior to the meeting, and they will provide a more general introduction to/contextualization of their project rather than reading a paper. But it's also possible to have conference-style presentations.

3) I've been in colloquium settings with and without moderators running the conversation. Both have worked OK; the moderators made sure that everyone talked and didn't exhaust all available airspace, but the conversations were necessarily less free-flowing.

4) Food is good.
posted by thomas j wise at 6:50 PM on September 1, 2016

I'm more familiar with karbonokapi's second definition: an informal seminar series, scheduled regularly across the academic year, often used to talk about work in progress or a small research project -- not as focused or didactic as a 'true' seminar, but built around the idea of active discussion and a willingness to go off on some tangents. In the humanities and social sciences, it's often a good format for interdisciplinary gatherings; in the hard sciences, it's more about bringing together research groups in similar fields but with different areas of interest.

(For instance, as a doctoral student, I took part in an ongoing colloquium on the long eighteenth century that brought in literature, history, art history, architecture, music, history-of-science, etc.)

For a good colloquium in that format, what's presented should have broad appeal but narrow scope: on the humanities side, I'd say a shade narrower in subject matter and less technical than a typical conference paper, and definitely more "how about this interesting stuff I found digging in the archives" than "I will now redefine how this topic should be approached".
posted by holgate at 7:13 PM on September 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Re. (4) above, yes, with time to eat it so you're not trying to sneak peanuts from a pocket during a presentation, and, a vague plan for what pub people will retire to afterwards, so people can chat and unwind. Relative lack of formality is a plus, especially for the few gently terrified undergrads.
posted by kmennie at 7:26 PM on September 1, 2016

I think you've really got to ask the requester what they have in mind by this, and/or find a webpage for a previous one that exactly matches your location and field. None of the above answers are what I would call a colloquium in my field / geographical region. (For us, a colloquium is a single ~1hr long talk by an invited speaker at the level of a department, part of a series. Source: I am currently the co-chair of the colloquium committee in my department.)
posted by advil at 11:12 PM on September 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

I agree with advil, you really need to ask for a description of the format - the definition of colloquium varies even within institutions... I arrange colloquia for professors and it seems to me each one of them has their own definition, depending on what their field and geographical location is, but also on their age (eg an emeritus uses it differently than the younger colleagues).

At our institute, we have all types in parallel, as described above, incl ones that fit the single, 1 hour talk descpription.
Needless to say it is confusing. As the admin person responsible to write the invitations, I solve it by asking the academic organisers detailed questions, and then add a short description of the format to the invitation.
posted by 15L06 at 1:43 AM on September 2, 2016

In my department, a colloquium means a scheduled talk by an invited speaker, around an hour and a half long (including questions). There is usually light refreshments before or after. The formality varies -- most are small, but we also have special occasion ones, which are in bigger, nicer auditoriums and have better food.

So yeah, I think you are really going to need to get an idea of what they expect, because it could vary a lot even following the same "format."
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 6:29 AM on September 2, 2016