Behind the scenes of the NECS 2023 Conference
Feature - Arina Kosareva
Co-organized by the “Screen Cultures” MA program at the University of Oslo and the European Network for Cinema and Media Studies, this years’ NECS was one of the largest academic events in media and film studies in Europe. Because of COVID-19, the preparation for it took nearly 3 years - but the result was 100% worth it. Here is how the one-week Conference in Oslo hosting more than 400 scholars from all over the globe came to be.
NECS 2023 Conference at UiO, co-organized by the “Screen Cultures” MA program at the University of Oslo and the European Network for Cinema and Media Studies–NECS. Photo: Arina Kosareva / PRESSET.
Somehow, the NECS 2023 fell on the hottest and driest week of summer in Norway’s capital - between June 13-17, the temperature went over +30°C every day, with occasional clouds only teasing with the idea of rain. And while UiO students cooled off in the fountains on the Blindern campus, the Local Organizing Committee of the Conference sprinted from one building to another to make sure that each and every of the 400+ guests got their badge, found their panel, and picked up their lunch. It was a fun and enjoyable hustle - but also a great responsibility.
The early stages of planning
The offer to host the NECS Conference at the University of Oslo came in early 2020. As Michał Pabiś-Orzeszyna, the member of the Steering Committee for the European Network for Cinema and Media Studies-NECS at the time, explains, “The ‘Screen Cultures’ MA program came to mind as a particularly strong center of film and media scholarship in Europe. Knowing that the Department of Media and Communication (IMK) has a strong reputation among NECS members, the committee felt that Oslo would be a fantastic location for a future conference. Hoping that Oslo colleagues might be interested in hosting an edition of NECS, Bregt Lameris, one of the members of the Network and the Steering Committee, reached out to Steffen Krüger, Pasi Väliaho, and Kim Wilkins.”
Pasi Väliaho, Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas, eventually had to step away from the direct organization of the Conference for personal reasons. And so, Steffen Krüger, Senior Lecturer at IMK and the Head of the “Screen Cultures” at the time, and Kim Wilkins, then a Postdoctoral Fellow and now an Associate Professor and the current Head of the Program, IMK, took the reins, forming the backbone of the Local Organizing Committee for NECS 2023. But first, they had to convince the Department Board that hosting a Conference of such scope was beneficial for both the faculty and the university.
“There was a lot of ‘blood, sweat, and tears’ during the initial period,” reminisce Steffen and Kim. “We met with our colleagues to see if there was interest in such an event. This was followed by several rounds of meetings with the Board. We had to devise long written statements on what this would bring the Department: international standing, internal collaboration, and so on.”
The NECS Conference is one of the most respected academic conferences in cinema and media studies in Europe. The European Network for Cinema and Media Studies, a non-profit organization founded in 2005 Berlin, Germany, is behind it. Among its many aims, one in particular stands out: “…to establish film and media studies as a dynamic and important part of the arts and humanities research in Europe.” In terms of scholarship, IMK oscillates between social sciences and humanities, and the NECS Conference had a lot of potential to become a platform for academic collaboration for the latter side. “The Network originally comes from cinema, but it is much broader in scope, with research on media, television, and technology being a part of it, too, so it created a lot of avenues for participation both for our Department and the members of NECS,” elaborates Kim.
The original plan was to host the Conference at the University of Oslo in the summer of 2021, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced the Steering Committee of NECS to postpone everything by two years. “This turned out to be a good thing for us. We had more time to prepare in general,” admit Steffen and Kim. “On top of that, coming up with the theme of the Conference was a time-consuming challenge, as the topic had to be very distinct but also broad enough so that people could actually say something about it.”
CARE - the overarching theme of the Conference
“As we went into the pandemic, care was on everyone’s mind,” reflects Steffen. To a large extent, the theme of the NECS 2023, “Care,” was his idea. “I come from media studies with a psychosocial perspective, and I have a lot of colleagues doing research in welfare, working conditions, the medical field, psychology… So it felt very natural to place care at the center of the Conference.”
“In terms of distinctiveness and broadness, care was ideal, too,” adds Kim. “There were so many directions one could take… For example, caring for something or someone also means the absence of care. What deserves to be cared for? The notions of legacy and preservation come to mind. And then you just broaden it out. Cinephilia is an extreme form of care. And attention is care. All this made a lot of sense.”
The members of NECS found the theme perfect. “After some years of struggles, with the pandemic, with the Russia-Ukraine War, with the difficult situations of academics in many countries across Europe and beyond, we all had to re-think at least a bit our plans, our goals, our priorities, as researchers and as human beings,” says Luca Barra, Associate Professor at the University of Bologna and a member of the Steering Committee for NECS. “We all are objects and subjects of care. And to all the Steering Committee, as well as the local organizers, to develop an entire conference around this topic, across different theoretical and methodological perspectives, appeared to be - and actually was - useful, interesting, filled with meaning.”
The discussions and the announcement of the theme coincided with the publication of The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence (2020). Written by The Care Collective, a group of UK/Australia-based scholars with diverse backgrounds, it is a multidisciplinary exploration of the practices of care in various domains, from politics and economy to communities and families. The Care Manifesto defines care as “our individual and common ability to provide the political, social, material, and emotional conditions that allow the vast majority of people and living creatures on this planet to thrive - along with the planet itself.” This became one of the points of departure for the Local Committee in Oslo, and the whole Conference was devised in accordance with the fundamental principles of care - which are also consistent with the long-term goals of the University of Oslo and the intrinsic values of Norwegian society.
Since 2019, UiO has been working on the Comprehensive Climate and Environmental Strategy to ensure the sustainable development of education, research, and life on campus, in Oslo, and in the country in general. Reducing energy consumption is one of the main goals of the strategy, and for the NECS Conference it meant that the air conditioning systems had to be used moderately throughout the week despite the rising temperatures. Nonetheless, to accommodate the guests during the heatwave, the Local Committee did negotiate with the University for a more comfortable indoors environment.
Environmental considerations were important for the NECS 2023 team in general. A very limited number of programs were printed, for instance, and the participants of the Conference were referred to the digital brochure for more details on the panels and events of the week. Lanyards - an unavoidable commodity of every academic event that always gets thrown out - were gathered on the last day of the Conference to be reused in the future. Even the Care-themed T-shirts that the NECS 2023 assistants were wearing throughout the week were produced by a sustainable Oslo-based print shop and designer studio 10/10.
The designer of the logo for the NECS 2023, Abirami Logendran, a freelance graphic designer who was a “Screen Cultures” student at the time, was the one to suggest ordering the T-shirts at 10/10 to the Local Organizing Committee . “We had multiple print shops available, but I personally know the owner of this one, so there was no doubt that they would produce the T-shirts in an environmentally friendly way,” says Abirami.
Norway as the location of the Conference has predetermined many financial decisions for it, too. Oslo is not a cheap city - and this had to be accounted for. “We made sure to warn our guests against taking the taxi from the airport, for example,” says Kim. “What kind of a welcome to the NECS 2023 would it be if they had to pay over NOK1000 (ca. EUR100) for a drive to the hotel upon arrival?”
The same logic was applied to the scope of the Conference. “Normally, around 700-900 delegates attend NECS conferences, and food is usually not offered. But Norway is one of the most expensive countries in the world,” continues Steffen. “We wanted to take care of our guests, but if we had to host so many, we simply couldn’t afford to offer them lunch every day. So we decided to have a smaller event - but with free food for the participants.”
“Our goal was to practice what we preach,” joins Kim. “In Norwegian academia, any work that you do has to be compensated. We couldn’t just ask our student assistants to work for ‘a nice line in their CV’ - these were long hours they had to spend on campus. So they got paid for their time. But it was the Norwegian system that had facilitated this, of course. Anywhere else things could have gone differently.”
The Local Organizing Committee of the NECS 2023 in Oslo. Steffen Krüger and Kim Wilkins in the middle, surrounded by student assistants, most of them from the “Screen Cultures” MA program at UiO. Photo: NECS 2023
Nonetheless, the promise of payment, albeit important, was not the main incentive for those who agreed to become the Conference assistants. “My motivation as an exchange student was to get valuable working experience during my time in Norway, and the NECS 2023 seemed promising in this respect,” says Salomé Chalandri who was assisting at the Conference. “I wanted to learn how to organize such events, meet new people from the University… Besides, some of my friends were also going to work for the Conference, therefore, I was thrilled to spend some more time with them. Getting paid was a pleasant addition to all this.”
“Our students got a taste of the academic life during the NECS,” adds Kim, “and it was also one of our goals. If some of them continue on this path, the Conference will basically be a summer of their careers.”
Nearly 100 panels and workshops - in only 5 days
Once the theme of the Conference was announced, a steady flow of abstracts and workshop proposals from the NECS members from all over the planet followed. The Local Organizing Committee received a total of 257 individual paper proposals, 64 pre-constituted panel proposals, and 13 workshop proposals. Each submission was carefully read and evaluated by fourteen UiO professors. “This was a challenging process,” affirm Steffen and Kim. “The Committee received a lot of fantastic proposals, and they did their best in terms of selecting from this variety.”
The most frenzied part of the organizational process was about to begin - establishing separate panels. “With pre-constituted panels, it was easy,” says Kim, who was primarily responsible for this task. “But putting together speeches by scholars with different backgrounds, and on different stages of their academic career, was a true challenge.”
“I needed to make sure that all the abstracts worked together, because some were from fields that I was not necessarily 100% familiar with. It would be really bad if an argument made during a panel ended up in an unproductive argument with someone else’s speech on the very same panel,” continues Kim. “Ethics was also in play. You don’t want a panel consisting of three professors and one graduate student - because that student would get no questions or might feel terribly intimidated. At the same time, you don’t want a panel with three graduate students and one professor - because then you run the risk of no one going to it.”
What further complicated the process was the fact that not all of the panelists whose proposals had been accepted actually confirmed their participation. The reason behind this was that they applied for several conferences with the same abstract - a normal practice in the field - and it was accepted before NECS. Or sometimes people would withdraw from the Conference closer to its dates for whatever reasons, like family or health, and the panels had to be rearranged once again. “This added an extra layer of stress,” confesses Kim. “You have just finalized all the panels, everything seems to work, and then you get an email about someone deciding not to arrive, their panel falls apart, and you have to figure out where to put the rest of the people.”
Continuous rearrangement of the panels also meant that the program of the Conference had to be revised. Adam Buono Glazer and Samantha Atkins, Head Administrative Assistants for the NECS 2023 and “Screen Cultures” students, were the ones dealing with this. Adam was in charge of communications with the guests, and Samantha worked on the brochure that featured the program of the Conference.
Although everything turned out fine in the end, last-minute changes were adding to the pressure - and some earlier decisions bore unexpected ramifications. “We had set up a Gmail account for all NECS communications,” tells Adam. “And who would have known that the anti-spam systems of many universities in Europe would block our email address? Some of the panelists did not receive the letter about being accepted for the Conference because of that, and we discovered it quite late - when Kim or Steffen wrote to them privately, asking if they were willing to chair a panel.”
Fortunately, Samantha and Adam had created a separate Excel sheet of all the panelists and panels, so keeping track of “reshuffling” was more or less feasible. Having said that, in the end, there were about 20 revisions of the 70-page program of the Conference. “We tried to make the brochure as simple as possible,” explains Samantha. “I had the one from the previous NECS in Bucharest as a starting point. We looked at what was done there, learned from it, and tried to put all the necessary information about our event in the most coherent way possible.”
Perfection was never the goal in this case, and you can keep track of only so much when working with the seemingly endless stream of updates. “We did have some mistakes in the final brochure, but nothing major,” admit Adam and Samantha. “For example, Panel E in the program goes after Panel I. It was quite funny, actually, because just swapping the letters wouldn’t do - we were afraid that it would break the whole system we had built. So we just let it go.”
A special day for graduate students
Graduate Workshop Day is an important part of NECS conferences. “We knew that we wanted to have it, and we also knew it would be an amazing opportunity for our PhD students to participate in the organization of such an event before they graduated,” says Kim. “But doing a PhD is a full-time job, so we had to select people who were not going to submit their dissertation right away - because arranging a whole conference day on your own would require a lot of time and dedication.”
Carrie Russpatrick and Sebastian Cole, PhD candidates still in the earlier phases of their projects at the time, were the ideal choice. Both are a part of the “Screen Cultures” research group and were offered the chance to take over the Graduate Workshop Day at the initial stages of the organizational process, in late 2020 – early 2021. With the pandemic disrupting virtually everything, they, too, had a lot of extra time to prepare - while also writing their dissertations.
“There were moments when we were very busy, especially when the Call for Papers closed,” say Carrie and Sebastian, “We received 30 really strong abstracts that took some time to narrow down. We sent many letters to the applicants, and afterwards there was a lot of back-and-forth with every one of them: what time works for them, what do they need for the presentation, etc. We spent a lot of time writing and replying to emails. When it was all said and done we had 9 truly spectacular presenters finalized.”
But the most challenging task, of course, came before all that - Carrie and Sebastian had to devise the theme for the Call for Papers on their own. “Care was our starting point,” recalls Carrie, whose research interest in the feminist ethics of care fueled the brainstorming. “We wanted to approach the theme of care from a different angle. We started with the thought of film and narratives as important imaginaries of care to explore what care is and what it can be. This got us thinking about futurity and what we imagine media and technology's role is in those relations. We wanted to explore new ways of thinking about care relations - the human, the technological, and beyond. The explorations of nonhuman elements of care also became a really interesting line of thought for our presenters which made for a seriously thought-provoking set of panels.… Luckily, Steffen and Kim, as well as the NECS Steering Committee, really loved the idea, so the whole thing turned out perfectly.”
Ingvil Hellstrand, Associate Professor at the Department of Caring and Ethics, University of Stavanger, who was supervising Carrie during her master’s, was the perfect fit for the keynote speaker of the Graduate Workshop Day. Ingvil is one of the leading Norwegian scholars on care, the posthuman side of it, and care imaginaries in particular. Currently, she is a part of the research project called Caring Futures: developing care ethics for technology-mediated care practices (2020–2024), so the theme that Carrie and Sebastian pitched was of absolute relevance to her.
“I am an interdisciplinary scholar with a background in the humanities and the social sciences, and, having worked in the health sciences for a few years now, being part of the NECS Conference was also a way of coming ‘home’ to my old haunts of feminist film studies and cultural studies,” reflects Ingvil. “I really love that the topic of care is equally relevant for media studies as well as the health sciences - and I count myself lucky to be able to take part in the explorations of care in multiple fields of study.”
The topic of Ingvil’s keynote speech was “On the Messiness of Care: Vulnerability, Responsibility and Community,” and her touch on the futures of care was incredibly nuanced. “Care happens in the most spurious of places, and, in spite of professionalising and institutionalising it, it remains in its embodied, situational, changeable, and happenstance ways,” comments the scholar on her presentation. “The radical potential of care ethics lies in the attempt to overturn the entire narrative about what it means to be in need of care. From being reserved to the ‘needy’ to acknowledging that we are all vulnerable, and that we will need help and support from others at various stages of life.”
The choice of the theme and the keynote speaker was ideal, really, and the impressive turnout on the day only proved it. “Graduate Workshop was on the first day of the Conference, but it was not part of the main three days, and we expected that some people might still be outside of Norway so the room was smaller to provide a more intimate setting for the graduate students,” share Carrie and Sebastian. “But Ingvil's topic was so compelling and the presentations we had lined up turned out to be quite a draw for the other Conference attendees. So many came to listen to Ingvil that they had to stand in the back and even sit on window sills - but it only made the atmosphere more congenial and open so it turned out to be a great space.”
Left to right: Carrie Russpatrick, PhD Candidate, IMK, Ingvil Hellstrand, the keynote speaker for Graduate Workshop Day, and Sebastian Cole, PhD Candidate, IMK. Photo: Arina Kosareva / PRESSET.
After the Graduate Workshop Day, both Carrie and Sebastian went back to their PhD projects. Time flew, with the preparations for the NECS Conference spanning almost all years of their programs, and both are scheduled to submit their dissertations in the coming months. Carrie’s research focuses on the ways gender is translated through film, and she is particularly interested in “the narratives and bodies of monsters in screen media that resemble human vulvas.” Sebastian is exploring how algorithms influence the way we use music platforms, Spotify specifically. “I’m interested in how one technology behind Spotify shapes recommendation playlists, but users still end up listening to different music,” explains Sebastian.
When reflecting on the Conference, both he and Carrie feel like it was an amazing experience for them. “Frankly, I was a little intimidated when I began to work on the Conference, since my background is mostly in algorithms - and NECS is a film conference first and foremost,” admits Sebastian. “I did some research on film in the past, but I still was not coming from this field. Thankfully, everything turned out fine in the end, and Carrie and I learned a lot.”
“Organizing the Graduate Workshop for the NECS 2023 was incredible,” agrees Carrie. “It was a little stressful, too, because even though I study film now, it has never been my primary focus either. But Sebastian and I made a great team, and there was a lot of support from Kim, Steffen, and the NECS in general. We are truly lucky to have been chosen as Graduate Workshop Organizers and are thrilled with the level of discourse and the quality of presentations that we had. The entire event was thought-provoking and something really special for us.”
Keynote speakers
The Main Conference spanned three days, and each was marked by a keynote speech by one of the leading scholars in media studies. They were:
Shohini Chaudhuri, Professor at the Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies, University of Essex, UK,
Jodi Dean, Professor of Politics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges Geneva, NY, USA,
and Toby Miller, Stuart Hall Professor of Cultural Studies, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico.
“We wanted to invite people who worked on a variety of topics, so one day we sat down and came up with a ‘dream list’ of academics for the NECS,” share Steffen and Kim. “Our keynotes had to be provocative, too, we intended for their speeches to stir conversations. The topics and perspectives that we hoped to cover in these three days also included post-colonialism, the criticism of neoliberalism, and environmentalism. And it was truly serendipitous - we managed to get everyone and everything.”
Shohini Chaudhuri’s research concerns the relationship between human rights and cinema, and her main focus is Middle-Eastern film. Her balanced speech on the “Practices of Care in Crisis Cinema” drew from her book Cinema of the Dark Side: Atrocity and the Ethics of Film Spectatorship (2014), while the examples she discussed came from her more recent research, including her latest book Crisis Cinema in the Middle East (2022). “ I wanted to explore how the media influence who or what we care for through their ‘frames’ which create hierarchies of attention,” says Shohini. “So I talked about some of the typical frames of mainstream news and cinema, and how independent cinema from the Middle East makes visible what’s invisible in those frames through alternative framing strategies that focus on the perspectives and experiences of people on the ground in crisis zones.”
Jodi Dean is a scholar who has dedicated her career to questioning the neoliberal state, and her keynote on “The Subject Supposed to Care” raised important issues of the capitalistic system and was received enthusiastically by the delegates. Finally, Toby Miller had done a lot of research on greenwashing, and his presentation on “Greenwashing Our Way” nuanced the notions of care through the environmental lens, revealing hidden agendas of global corporations.
“We also wanted to have very different styles of presentation for each day of the Conference,” continue Steffen and Kim. “Shohini has a very calm manner of presenting on quite harrowing material, while Jodi is very energetic, fiercely critical, and captivating. Toby, in turn, is a very humorous and entertaining public speaker in general, very charismatic. His speech, with a cascade of jokes and flying T-shirts, was perfect for the last day of the NECS.”
Toby Miller, Stuart Hall Professor of Cultural Studies, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, threw a T-shirt with a print of the Communist Manifesto to the audience during his keynote speech on “Greenwashing Our Way.” Photo: Arina Kosareva / PRESSET.
Extra events - cultural program
With Graduate Day and its keynote speaker and 94 panels and three keynote presentations during the Main Conference, the program of the NECS 2023 was already saturated. Nevertheless, the Local Committee did devise quite a diverse cultural program. “There is only so much people could do during these three-four days of the Conference,” explains Adam, who was in charge of reaching out to potential partners and venues that could host events for the NECS. “The idea was to offer our delegates some variety but not to overwhelm them.”
Of all the different locations Adam was in contact with, Vega Scene and Kunstnernes Hus were the quickest to agree to collaborate with the “Screen Cultures” and the NECS 2023. “As an MA program, we have always had close ties with Vega and Kunstnernes Hus,” comments Adam. “So we had a couple of Zoom calls with them, exchanged some emails, and everything was set.”
Conversation about Gritt with the film director Itonje Søimer Guttormsen and Jon Inge Faldalen, Associate Professor at UiO. Vega Scene. Photo: Arina Kosareva / PRESSET.
Gritt at Vega Scene
At Vega, Itonje Søimer Guttormsen’s Gritt (2021) was screened, preceded by a discussion and Q&A between the film director and Jon Inge Faldalen from UiO. Gritt is Guttormsen’s feature debut, with Birgitte Larsen in the titular role of Gry-Jeanette Dahl who prefers to be called “Gritt.” She is a young artist trying to break into the theatrical scene in Oslo, and watching her struggle to take care of the very basic things in life - like getting food or finding a place to sleep - was truly mesmerizing.
“When we were discussing which film to screen during the NECS 2023 with the Local Organizing Committee, we knew that we wanted to introduce a recent Norwegian film to the international audience,” says Truls Foss, the Head of Programming at Vega Scene. “Gritt seemed like an ideal choice, since it has not yet been as thoroughly discussed at our cinema as, for example, The Worst Person in the World.”
“Besides, the theme of self-care is one of paramount in the film,” continues Truls. “I, personally, sympathize a lot with Gritt - she is a complex character, and her struggles are very similar to those that real young Norwegian artists have to go through. The film itself, in a way, cares about Gritt: you can see when she is really annoying or a little bit cynical - but at the same there is a lot of love and patience for her, too.”
“Screening Care” at Kunstnernes Hus
Miriam De Rosa, Ca' Foscari, University of Venice, (in the center) moderating the online Q&A with Marlies Pöschl (below) and Gala Hernández López (upper right corner). Kunstnernes Hus. Photo: Arina Kosareva / PRESSET.
At Kunstnernes Hus, delegates were offered an event called “Screening Care.” It featured two very different short films: Aurore (2019) by Marlies Pöschl and La Mécanique des fluides (2022) by Gala Hernández López, followed by the Q&A with the directors. “Aurore is a voice without a body, she lives in a crevice, she resides on the interface,” comments on her film Marlies Pöschl. It is an experimental film about a bodiless technology named Aurore who offers companionship to elderly people. Genre-wise, it is positioned between TV ad, semi-documentary, and science fiction. La Mécanique des fluides is also experimental: it features a virtual journey into the ambivalence of the incel culture and the way it is (mis)perceived in the media.
The “Screening Care” event was co-sponsored by the CCVA Workgroup established in 2013 as a part of NECS. CCVA stands for Cinema and Contemporary Visual Arts and is “devoted to the exploration of the relationship between cinema and contemporary visual arts in terms of both representation and exhibition strategies.” Miriam De Rosa, one of the founders of the Workgroup, was the one who brought Aurore and La Mécanique des fluides to Oslo and moderated the Q&A.
The theme of care was, of course, the main criteria for the Workgroup’s choice of the films. “It is an urgent topic approachable from a multiplicity of points of views, and scouting for possible films to tackle it was quite interesting,” says Miriam. “One could think about the representation of care, for example. How do you talk about it, and do you talk about it at all? Is it a topic? Is it on the agenda? Is it considered as important as it should be?”
Aurore, in this sense, is a unique visual take on the inevitability of aging and the future practices of care associated with it. “Now, in the moment where our society goes towards the raising of the average age, aging obviously becomes a really important topic that poses all kinds of questions,” continues Miriam, “How do you represent it? Is it properly negotiated in our society? What is the narrative and the rhetoric about it? What are the contemporary artistic representational tropes?”
La Mécanique des fluides also explores care from the perspective of technology. “Online environments are an intrinsic part of our reality,” comments Miriam. “ What happens to one’s identity when they live online? What are the ways people get in touch with one another in this kind of environment? How is empathy developing there?”
In other words, there is a very clear common thread between these films. With technology and daily life practices intertwined, the society finds itself in a sort of post-digital “bubble” environment where one’s use of screens cannot be separated from the self. “With the ‘Screening Care’ event,” affirms Miriam, “ we tried to attend to this side of the relationship between care and moving images.”
Kunstnernes Hus turned out to be a perfect location for this screening. Because of the close ties the “Screen Cultures” MA program has with it, arranging everything was quick and easy, and despite the long Conference day, many delegates attended the event and were very active during the Q&A. “The films worked quite well in the relationship with the number of issues that were addressed during the panels,” reflects Miriam. “Besides, the NECS Conference gave us the chance to involve people outside the CCVA workgroup into the discussions of contemporary cinema and visual arts, and this is what the Network is all about - inclusion and producing and fostering cultural and academic exchange. So yes, it was a very good and enriching experience.”
The Closing Party
The final event of the Conference - the Closing Party at Chateau Neuf, the concrete building housing the Norwegian Student Union (Det Norske Studentersamfund) - became a night to remember. “We enjoyed the dancing, the music, and the informal ambience of the party. It was a joy to see everyone ‘decompress’ after the intense week we had just gone through,” reflect Steffen and Kim. “And for us personally, with our wonderful student assistants, this was also a celebration of all the hard work we had done.”
Steffen Krüger with balloons during the last day of the Conference. “That took some planning,” says Steffen. “I hid them before addressing the delegates to then dramatically take them out. And I was really happy with that moment! All of us needed something to guide us over from a mode of hard work and intense thinking to relaxing.” Photo: Arina Kosareva / PRESSET.
In the aftermath of the NECS 2023
As the Conference concluded and the delegates left Oslo to attend other academic events of the summer, both the Local and the Steering Committee look back on the week with fondness and appreciation.
“All the work on the conference has been a pleasure, thanks to a wonderful local organizing team. Both the city and the university looked magnificent (and the very warm climate and never-ending light helped). Especially, the graduate workshop, the keynotes, the conference panels, and all the activities in between have been rich, full of insights, able to develop further thinking and further networking. I very much enjoyed the many discussions outside the panels, the random bumps into colleagues and friends while browsing the program or running to a next room, and the strong feeling of a vibrant community, the NECS community, able to meet again in person without masks and protocols,” says Luca Barra from the Steering Committee of NECS.
Student assistants for the Conference share the same feelings. “The opportunity to attend, capture, and promote some of the most interesting lectures of the week was the most fun and engaging part of the NECS 2023 for me,” says Salomé Chalandri. “It is amazing for an international student like me to have access to similar events. They are sources of knowledge, and contribute to developing higher standards for educational institutions.”
As an instantiation of the NECS Conferences, the one in Oslo will be remembered for its care-fulness (sic). “Our edition of the Conference tied into a lot of notions,” concludes Steffen. “Care is a structure of feeling. Caring is what we aspire to be. A lot of it has to do with people, of course, but also with appreciating and caring for the welfare state and the values which we often take for granted. The examination of these concepts from different vantage points was at the core of the whole event.”
“The principles of care are behind our edition of NECS, it’s true,” adds Kim. “I think it was an ethical Conference, and it was the way that we were doing things from the start to finish. We did care about the people who were coming - and about the outcome.”
A special thanks to the NECS team for insights into this years conference.