Have a great idea for a panel, a book launch, or a collaborative discussion that you think would be a good BRANE-affiliated event? Here’s how to get started on planning your event. Please read this whole checklist before you get started.
Graduate students are welcome to organize events!
- Come up with a title and short description of your event.
- Fill out this form, which will be sent to BRANE to let us know about your idea and how it fits BRANE’s principles.
- Contact the people you would like to have participate in your event. We are happy to make recommendations if you need additional names, especially to ensure that you have a diverse group of participants and that we’re all expanding our intellectual circles beyond the usual suspects.
- Coordinate with participants to find a date and time that works for everyone. Doodle polls are an easy way to do this.
- Create a Zoom event that includes a registration option. If you do not have the ability to host a Zoom event yourself, please contact us for help.
- Consider accessibility: plan ahead to arrange for closed captioning and ask participants to verbally describe any images they will use. (Please see further below.)
- Create a kick-ass graphic for your event! Don’t forget to put the registration link and the BRANE logo on it. Contact us for the logo.
- Send us the final deets and the graphic and we’ll post it on our website and social media.
- Assign at least one person besides the host to help run the event (letting people in from the waiting room, monitoring the chat, etc.).
Other things to make sure of:
- Remember, the BRANE Collective is a decentralized, collaborative, and free context for sharing scholarly work, resources, and support. Any scholar who agrees to abide by BRANE’s principles is welcome to be part of the collective and launch their own initiatives.
- YOU will be planning this event! We are here as a resource but we don’t run events for you.
- Inclusion is one of our principles, and we expect session organizers to create meaningful diversity in their events. This might mean reaching out to people who aren’t already in your circles to learn about and acknowledge their scholarly contributions, which can only make our work better. We can help connect people who might not know each other yet.
- At past BRANE events, we have not used people’s institutional affiliations to advertise their participation or to introduce them. This has been well received! We encourage you to do the same: identifying people by their intellectual interests, not where they work or the kind of position they hold, creates a more collegial and inclusive environment.
- We strive to increase accessibility for everyone. We suggest captioning (professional service paid by someone with a research account or crowd-funded – BRANE has used AST CaptionSync – or AI). Please also instruct participants to describe any images they use in presentations.
We encourage a variety of different events and hope people will think creatively about how new ideas and scholarship can be presented to the public. Here are a few possibilities for types of events:
- Research workshops
- New PhD showcases (to celebrate and discuss work by new PhDs)
- Primary text labs (see here!)
- Practical training sessions
- Interviews
- Book launches
- Book review panels
Bible and Religions of the Ancient Near East Collective 