Distant Conferences: First Experience

In March and April 2020, SFL held three scientific conferences online. We asked the organizers about the realities of this new format.

The first conference SFL held was the XIV International Scientific Conference for Undergraduate and Graduate Students “La France et la Francophonie d'aujourd'hui”, which began at the end of March. Although it was held remotely, Natalia V. Zhukova, a member of the organizing committee, noted that there was a large number of applications, which indicates a growing interest in the conference.
Among those taking part were undergraduate and graduate students not only from HSE, but also Moscow State University, Moscow State Linguistic University, RUDN University, and many others. Representatives from French-speaking countries also attended as experts and moderators.
SFL decided to preserve the traditions of previous years: all reports underwent thorough examination, and the authors of the best research papers received diplomas. A collection of conference papers will also be published.

The V Scientific Interuniversity Conference of Young Scientists "The Space of Academic Interests: Foreign Languages and Intercultural Communication - Current Development Vectors and Prospects" was also held online. By the middle of April, all the participants had sent their reports, which were then reviewed. A month later, speakers began to prepare articles for publication, based on the review results.  
Elena G. Koshkina, a member of the organizing committee, commented that there was a great deal of interest in the conference. It included 145 speakers from various universities all across the country, undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate students, as well as young teachers, including researchers. 
The conference was truly multilingual: in addition to reports in English, there were also speeches in German, French, Italian and Spanish.
The four most popular sections were:
1. Problems and Prospects of Development of National and Foreign Linguistics.
2. Modern Approaches and Current Issues of Teaching a Foreign Language.
3. Current Methods of English Language Teaching 
4. Problems of Modern Translation.
The German-language International Scientific and Practical Conference for Students and Graduate Students "Welt und Wissenschaft"has already been running for 6 years, but this was the first time it was held in an online format.
 'I would like to thank my colleagues from the organizing committee, Evgeniya A. Uspenskaya and Tim Jaekel, as well as section moderators, Iris Baecker, Petr V. Rezvykh, Alexander Dreit, Martin Beisswenger, Christian Fröhlich, Dirk Meissner for their effective coordinating work and maintaining the joy of communication. In addition, I’m extremely grateful to all the conference participants who presented their research at the section meetings for staying with us and not being afraid of our online experiment.
Despite the success of the conference, we were not able to implement a significant part of the programme. We had to abandon the information fair, which had already become a tradition, as well as a panel discussion with German and Russian experts which we had been preparing for several months.’
 ‘Therefore, we hope to hold a big offline conference next year,’ said Julia V. Pasko,a member of the organizing committee and head of the Scientific and International Activities Unit.