Call for Brief and Brilliant Session Self-Nominations

9/20/2023: Status notifications to B&B nominations have been sent to all presenters. Please check your inboxes including your spam folders. If you did not receive your notice, please email dj@sswr.org.

Interested in reaching a broader audience with your work?
Invested in sharing your work with the public, decision makers, funders?
Self-nominate to speak in SSWR’s 8th annual Brief & Brilliant Session.

March 6, 2023: Abstract Submission Site Now Open!

B&B Submission Deadline: Saturday, April 15, 2023, 11:59 pm, Pacific Time

SSWR is excited to welcome Brief & Brilliant self-nominations for the 2024 Annual Conference, Recentering & Democratizing Knowledge: The Next 30 Years of Social Work Science, Washington, DC, January 10-14, 2024.

The Brief & Brilliant session is a TedX-style event held annually at the SSWR conference that showcases social work scholarly talent. Five scholars will be selected to each give a 10-minute lightning talk, highlighting an idea from their area of work that is particularly important, relevant or intriguing.

The Brief & Brilliant session aims to translate social work research in order to engage a broad audience and emphasize the public relevance of this work. The goal is to emphasize the main conclusions of a scholar’s work (or the work of others in their area) rather than the methodological details behind it. Speakers will be provided with two training and support sessions (via video conference) where they will be coached to put aside their traditional academic slides of bulleted methods and, instead, prepare a talk that utilizes photos, images, storytelling, and media to engage their audience in understanding and connecting to their idea.

We are particularly interested in bold ideas related to this year’s conference theme: “Recentering & Democratizing Knowledge: The Next 30 Years of Social Work Science.”

To submit, please see author instructions below. Please note the deadline is Saturday, April 15, 2023, 11:59 pm, Pacific Time. Consider sending your colleagues interested in sharing their work in this innovative format this announcement and encouraging their self-nomination. Selected speakers will be notified in September 2023. Trainings will occur in November and December and talks will take place at SSWR in January 2024.

The Brief & Brilliant submission form includes the following questions.
  • Presentation title
  • In a sentence or two, how would you describe the focus of your scholarship? (150-word limit)
  • Why are you interested in speaking in the Brief & Brilliant session? (250-word limit)
  • What successes and challenges have you experienced in translating your work for broader (non-academic) audiences? (250-word limit)
  • Please list potential ideas or topics you are excited about sharing through the Brief & Brilliant format.
Please forward this announcement to your colleagues. For questions, contact A. DeeJay Hastings, CAE, program director, dj@sswr.org, 703-352-7797, ext. 2.
We thank you for your continued support of SSWR! We hope to see you and your colleagues in Washington, DC!
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