Call to Host the 2025 Post45 Graduate Symposium

Update: The University of Michigan has won the bid to host the 2025 Post45 Graduate Symposium, and the conference will be March 14-15, 2025 at the Ann Arbor Campus. To submit a paper for the symposium, please see the CFP.

We are pleased to announce an open call for bids to host the 2025 Post45 Graduate Symposium. This is a two-day symposium typically held in Spring, whereby around fifteen graduate students convene in a workshop-style setting to discuss works-in-progress.  The most recent graduate symposium was co-hosted by McGill University and Concordia University in Montréal. In hosting the symposium, you will have full support of the Steering Committee who will be writing the CFP, selecting papers, and coordinating with participants. As a host committee, you will be responsible for securing funding, booking rooms, and liaising with faculty participants at your institution(s). Past host institution organizers have reported bringing the symposium to their campus to be a rewarding undertaking, fostering community and rapport between faculty and graduates, as well as between departments and disciplines. It also makes for a constructive professionalization experience in organizing and service.

If you are interested in applying to host next year's conference at your institution--or if you would like to partner with another institution and jointly host the 2025 symposium--please fill out the following questionnaire by Monday August 12, 2024: https://forms.gle/tgsziwJTxXnXvBP3A. 

The questionnaire asks you to identify potential faculty participants and a keynote speaker, as well as possible sources of funding and accommodations for graduate student participants. For the 2024 symposium, we were able to secure a travel/hardship fund for participants with limited institutional support for travel/accommodations, and are particularly interested in bids that would seek to establish a similar fund for the 2025 symposium. There is no expectation that hosting applicants will have secured guaranteed funding or full faculty participation at the time of application. In the past, successful applicants have listed possible sources and avenues of funding (such as grants available for graduate conferences and events and/or possible meetings with your Department Chair or Director of Graduate Studies to discuss fundraising strategies) and have also identified 2-3 guaranteed faculty participants (remaining faculty participants can then be confirmed if the bid is successful).

If you have any questions regarding the host application process, please feel free to reach out to us with any concerns you might have. We hope to respond by the end of August, and will distribute CFP for the Symposium in September.

Very best,

The 2025 Grad Post45 Steering Committee (Alya Ansari, Lauryn Anderson, Andy Perluzzo, and Olivia Stowell)