Charlotte Rose Millar, Early Career Researcher, The University of Melbourne

I always look forward to ANZAMEMS. This year’s Brisbane offering provided the same wonderful mix of amazing papers, friendly people and intellectual debate that I have come to associate with any ANZAMEMS conference. Thanks to the generous support of the ANZAMEMS committee, I was able to attend the conference for the full five days. As much as I was looking forward to the conference, I did not expect to experience the profound sense of belonging and purpose that I came away with. Perhaps I should provide some context. Almost a year ago, I submitted my PhD and I graduated in March this year. With the exception of RSA in March this year, which I attended in somewhat of a post-PhD haze, ANZAMEMS was the first conference I attended as an early career researcher. As many reading will know, this post-PhD period is a difficult time, financially, emotionally and academically. Like many recent graduates, I experienced a strange sense of loss after submitting my thesis and found it difficult to focus on the next project. ANZAMEMS reinvigorated me. Although I already had an idea of what direction I wanted my research to take, talking to ANZAMEMS delegates allowed me to shape my ideas into a much fuller form. It reminded me of my love of academia and academic research and gave me the energy and focus I needed to get working on my book proposal. In the two months since ANZAMEMS I have regained my sense of focus, my engagement with my sources, and my drive to pursue my research and am now completely re-immersed in academic life.

This would not have happened at any conference. ANZAMEMS reminds us of the wonderful scholarly community that we have in Australia. Although small, it is this smallness that makes it so valuable. ANZAMEMS delegates were intellectually rigorous, always encouraging, constructively critical, and, perhaps most importantly, genuinely interested in advancing the careers and research of early career researchers. This was particularly notable in Brisbane with the launch of the Maddern-Crawford Network for advancing female academics, a development that was met with overwhelming support. This network formalises what many ANZAMEMS members already do and could only have come out of a scholarly community that is genuinely committed to helping each other. I would like to thank the ANZAMEMS conference committee for their fantastic work in bringing the conference together and to all the delegates who made it such a wonderful experience. Here’s to another fabulous event in Wellington 2017.