All participants spoke at length about the academic life that surrounds their work, and indeed, appeared to prefer to talk about that.  They spend much time on committees (too much, according to Wendy Martin), in mentoring graduate students, and in searching for funding.

Dale Berger talked about the fact that it is an institutional policy to encourage faculty to publish with graduate students. His work, at least at one time, focused on drinking and driving culture in several countries (Australia, New Zealand, Britain, at least).

Janet Brody talked of her work on “the gender of history;” how did the image of the typical historian become that of the “lone male historian isolated in his archives?”

Drew and McHenry spoke about supervising graduate dissertations. They maintained that students in their respective departments have a choice as to what they want their research topics to be. Drew said that talking to other scholars is more enhancing than attending conferences. He gave the example of his work with Samir Chatterjee on the statistics of international competitiveness. He said that he was currently in the process of making a second edition for a book that he had initially published 10 years ago. McHenry spoke about conferences, and his point was that it is invigorating to attend some conferences where you meet new faces and do not have to listen to the same people make the same comments.

Lorne Olfman spoke about IS labs and directing students to certain topics because it facilitates finding external funding and provides students with support networks.

Teresa Shaw spoke of her work in early Christian religion and culture with an emphasis on gender, and how she has less time to concentrate on her research because of her administrative duties.

Wendy Martin spoke about how competitive the nature of their work is and how researchers need to work together and help out one another. She later discussed how there is so much emphasis on research because the idea was that research would make a professor more prepared and knowledgeable. Finally, she discussed how there is a wealth of ideas when you work with graduate students and that you get research ideas from the oddest of places.