This is my first crack at something I’ll be talking about a lot over the next year. I think the networking environment (eugh) has been changed dramatically by Covid-19 and how we think about the process of building/expanding professional networks has to changed as a result.
A few key thoughts I want to explore in greater depth:
- There are fewer networking opportunities in routine academic work due to hybrid working
- There are some conferences, seminars and workshops which will remain online
- To the extent f2f conferences remain hybrid there will be less people attending in person, with sociodemographic patterns likely about who these people are
- There is greater use of collaboration platforms like Teams within institutions
- The multi-platform landscape for digital scholarship makes online networking more complicated than it used to be.
Mark Carrigan 