Alexandra Corneyllie , Trudie Walters, Anne Sophie Dubarry, Xun He, Thomas Hinault, Vanja Ković, Takfarinas Medani, Annalisa Pascarella, Svetlana Pinet, Manuela Ruzzoli, Natalie Schaworonkow, Anđela Šoškić, Katarina Stekić, Konstantinos Tsilimparis, José Luis Ulloa, Ruijie Wang, Maximilien Chaumon

Conferences are invaluable for career progression, offering unique opportunities for networking, collaboration, and learning. However, there are challenges associated with the traditional in-person conference format. For example, there is a significant ecological impact from attendees’ travel behaviour, and there are social inequities in conference attendance, with historically marginalised groups commonly facing barriers to participation. Innovative event design practices that enable academic conferences to be ‘done differently’ are crucial for addressing these ecological and social sustainability challenges. However, while some innovative conference practices have emerged in recent years, largely as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been little research carried out on the effectiveness of such practices. Our study addresses this gap using a mixed methods approach to analyse a real-world decentralised conference held in 2023, comparing it to traditional in-person conference and fully online conference scenarios. The decentralised format consists of local in-person hubs in different locations around the world, each with a bespoke local programme developed around a shared core global programme. We calculated the CO2 emissions from transport for each scenario and found the decentralised conference had significantly lower emissions than a traditional in-person conference, but higher emissions than a fully online conference. We also interviewed 14 local hub organisers and attendees to gain their perspectives about the ecological and social sustainability benefits of the decentralised conference format. We found that the more accessible and inclusive format attracted a more diverse range of attendees, meaning that the benefits attributed to conference attendance were able to be shared more equitably. This study is the first to provide evidence of the ecological and social sustainability benefits of doing conferences differently; by doing so it can be used in the argument to help transition conferences to a more desirable state in terms of ecological and social sustainability.