The Unofficial Guide to ECDV – Part 2 (Applying to Contribute)

Natalie Collins
8 minutes ago
8 min read

Read my first post introducing this guide HERE.

Introduction

The European Conference on Domestic Violence (their website is HERE takes place in a different European city every two years. An academic institution within that country commits to be the on-the-ground partner for the event; with their staff and students forming the organising committee with support from the international organising group.

The next ECDV is in Dublin on 5^th – 8^th September 2027.

The keynote presentations are those that are delivered from the main stage, where all delegates will gather to listen. These keynote speakers are invited by the conference organisers; often they will be experts from the host country. There will present for around 30 minutes each day there will be a couple of keynote presentations.

The rest of each day will be filled with 1.5 hour-ish sessions delivered across the conference venues by those who have applied to present. There will likely be approximately 15 different sessions happening simultaneously which participants can choose to attend. This sounds like a lot; because it is a lot!

Those applying to present at ECDV will have various motivations. PhD students may need opportunities to present their research. Those leading bigger research projects may need dissemination opportunities. Organisations may want to boost the credibility of their intervention or promote it to others. Many will be passionate about the people they serve being on the agenda.

How academic conferences work

Unlike in a non-academic conference, the programme is designed not solely to educate and inform attendees, it is designed to give those presenting opportunities to build experience and to present their research. This can be difficult for practitioners to get their heads around, but is a crucial difference to be aware of if you want to understand and get the most from ECDV.

It's wise to have an adult dothe budgeting.

Anyone can apply to deliver a session at ECDV. It is important to understand that when you are applying to deliver a session at ECDV, this is an opportunity for people to learn from you but also for you to learn from others. As such, it is not a paid speaking opportunity. Not only will you not be paid to deliver a session at ECDV, but you will also have to pay for your ticket to attend and budget for travel and accommodation expenses. The ticket price has not yet been announced for ECDV 2027, but the cost in both 2023 and 2025 was £320 per person. You don’t have to book into the conference (or pay for a ticket) until after you’ve been confirmed as a presenter.

Academics who attend conferences like ECDV will apply for funding to cover the costs associated with attending, or those costs may have been accounted for as part of a research grant. For practitioners, these costs will need to be covered either by your organisation or budgeted for in some other way. The benefits for attendance include opportunities to network, share about your work and learn from others. Each person will need to assess whether this seems like a good cost/benefit calculation for your work.

I know this is a batdog and not a bat signal, but can it ever be wrong to have a dog in a blog?

The application process for contributing to an academic conference is called a “call for abstracts”. This is because the conference organisers are sending out a call (a bit like batman’s “bat signal”) to say “heyyyy, we are doing a conference and we’d like you to be part of it”.

An abstract is a 300-word paragraph which distils the session down into a short form for conference organisers to consider. For academics, this abstract should cover their research methodology, results and conclusions. For practitioners, this paragraph needs to really “sell” why your session is important, evidence-based and compelling. The conference organisers might get more than 1000 submissions; they can only realistically read a short paragraph per submission.

Don’t be fooled by the term “abstract”. I know “abstract art” refers to something ambiguous and vague; but in this context it’s because the Latin abstractus (yes, of course, academia is based on fancy Latin things!). The term refers to the practice of extracting the most important, core elements from a larger document or concept and presenting them separately as a standalone summary.

Types of sessions

ECDV 2027 has three different types of sessions you can apply to deliver: a poster, a symposium, or a workshop.

Poster

This is a way of academics distilling their research onto a large, printed poster that will be displayed in a communal area of the conference. It can also be a way of sharing about a practice or policy initiative you have been involved with. Very often the posters will be displayed near where refreshments or lunch are served. The posters will be up for around half-a-day so people can peruse them whilst getting a coffee, having lunch or during a dedicated poster session time. During this dedicated time, the creator will be stood by her poster and be available to explain her research to conference delegates. There could over 30 posters displayed at one time and across the conference there will be different poster sessions and all the posters change to allow the most contributors to share their research or initiatives.

For practitioners, this could be an opportunity to tell conference delegates about your work, something innovative you are doing or promote ways academics could partner with you in projects you run. For these sorts of sessions you wouldn’t be preparing a presentation, but would rather be available to answer questions and tell people about what the project your poster explains.

You do not need to create the poster until you have been accepted by the organisers (the costs of designing and printing this will be yours and you may have to budget for airline fees for getting the poster to the conference). When applying for a policy/practice initiative poster, they want to know (in a total of 300 words):

The background and purpose of the practice or policy initiative.
A summary of the main points of the practice or policy initiative and any innovative elements.
Conclusions from and implications of the learning for practice, policy or further research.

For a research poster they want to know (in a total of 300 words):

Background and purpose of the study: description of the problem, research question(s) and/or hypotheses.
Methods: study design, sampling, data collection and approaches to analysis.
Findings.
Conclusions and implications: description of the main outcome(s) of the study and implications for practice, policy or further research.

When you attend ECDV, the posters are a great way to learn about research that could be useful to your work or to those you serve. The posters will all be listed on the programme, so you can find out in advance any of the poster creators you might want to connect with and arrive at the poster stand when they are programmed to be there.

ECDV has a poster competition which is judged by the conference organisers, with the winners celebrated at the end of the conference.

Symposium

A symposium is a session with a specific theme which has presentations by 3 – 5 people. One of these people will chair the session.

You would need to organise your own symposium group for ECDV. That involves identifying 2 – 4 people alongside yourself who could each do 10-15 minute presentations during the session. You will need to work out a broad theme (including a title and session abstract) which the whole session will be drawn from and then each presenter would have their own talk title and abstract for their part of the session.

Symposium sessions will usually be around 1.5 hours long and should include all presentations and time for questions. The chair is responsible for keeping everyone to time and fielding audience questions.

This is the process for applying for a symposium:

Each person in the symposium will need to apply individually with their details and their symposium abstract (including the Chair).
Once submitted, each abstract will be assigned an Abstract ID which needs sharing with the symposium chair.
The chair will do an application for the symposium as a whole. She will add the symposium abstract and then include the Abstract IDs for each of the symposium presenters.

Workshop

A workshop is usually a 1.5 hour session. This can be with one or more presenters and should be interactive. It is an opportunity for conference delegates to do more than solely listen and then ask questions.

Whilst this type of session may seem very attractive to practitioners, these sessions often don’t have a lot of attendees. For the academics present, time is at a premium and so getting 4 – 5 presentations about research (which may complement their research project) is often preferable to an experiential session which doesn’t contribute closely to their research objectives. Reading an academic paper could take longer that 1.5 hours, in a symposium you’re getting up to five pieces of research in that same amount of time.

For a workshop, alongside submitting the required Abstract, you will also have to answer the following questions:

What are the learning outcomes for participants from the workshop?
What opportunities will delegates have for interaction in the workshop?
Who is the target audience? Researchers or practice/policy?
What is the minimum number of participants you allow for your session?
What is the maximum number of participants you can accommodate in your session?
Are there any planning requirements for the workshop, e.g. particular layout of room etc.?
Do you have any specific requirements for your workshop, such as audio-visual needs or specific areas for instrumentation and equipment? Yes or No?

Other bits and pieces

Most practitioners are used to attending conferences where the speakers are experts imparting their wisdom to participants. At an academic conference, the speakers and delegates are all learning, with many of the sessions designed to support and encourage less experienced researchers to build their presentation confidence and skills. This can be quite difficult for practitioners to get their heads around!

The other thing to mention about applying to do a session is that on the programme, most people will solely read the titles to get a sense of what your session is about. This is because the programme is tons of pages long. You can read previous programmes here:

Reykjavik 2023: there was a separate abstract book alongside THIS programme.
Barcelona 2025: there was an app which had all the abstracts in alongside THIS programme.

When there are so many sessions to read through, many delegates are going to skim through the titles to identify relevant content. It’s crucial that your title is clear and compelling because that might be the only thing people use to decide whether to attend. Alongside this, there will be another couple of things in the application which allow delegates to easily whittle down which sessions to prioritise; for this, in your submission you will need to:

Decide a main conference theme your research falls into from a drop-down menu. And can you have an optional second theme.
Decide three keywords that are relevant to your presentation, these can be any words that are going to make clear who your presentation is aimed at.

You can do two submissions to deliver session at ECDV 2027. Some academics will do more as they will be listed as a co-author, but for most practitioners this is unlikely to be relevant as you would likely be submitting applications as the main applicant on your abstract.

Mistakes can be resolved right up until 30th October!

Also, don’t panic if you submit your application and then realised you have Made A Mistake! You can edit you submission right up until the application close on 30^th October.

You’ll find the key conference deadlines by scrolling down on THIS webpage. As you’ll see, if you’ve been accepted as a contributor you’ll hear by early February 2027 and then have until 1^st April to register (and pay) for the conference. The rest of the aspects of applying to contribute to ECDV are pretty self-explanatory on their website.

You can apply to contribute to ECDV HERE.

Watch this space for future posts about…

1. Preparing to attend (as a delegate and if you are accepted to present).

2. Making the most of the conference.

3. Debriefing from the conference.

But for now, it’s over and out from your friendly and unofficial conference demystifier!