Short Abstract

This workshop offers a safe, moderated space for emerging scholars to reflect on academic failures, such as rejected abstracts, unsuccessful grant applications, critical reviews, stalled projects, or moments of self-doubt.

Description

This workshop offers a safe, moderated space for emerging scholars to reflect on academic failures, such as rejected abstracts, unsuccessful grant applications, critical reviews, stalled projects, or moments of self-doubt. Rather than treating failure as a purely individual issue, the workshop frames it as something shaped by broader academic systems, including evaluation cultures, metrics, precarity, and institutional expectations. Participants will leave with a stronger sense of shared experience, practical micro-strategies for dealing with setbacks, and a more systemic understanding of how academic failure is produced and managed. For the conference, the workshop creates an important reflective space that complements more general discussions of academic difficulties by focusing specifically on failure within research and academic career trajectories.