Daily Times

The string of research conferences is now getting extended all around the globe. Pakistan, as a developing country, has also woken up to the significance of the research phenomenon. Keeping in mind the significant and important role of research in bringing about social change in the nations, Pakistan is increasingly organising the national international conferences–labelled as catalysts for change. To boost up the research across the country, the universities, nowadays, are directing the faculty members to produce the research atmosphere where they can execute more and more researches.

In the current period, universities in the context of Sindh are fuelling the enthusiasm to organise the conferences to a fault. With this reference, on October 10 and October 11, 2019, Shaheed Benazir Bhutto University Shaheed Benazirabad organised, for the first time, its first international conference on multidisciplinary innovation and research challenges in Social Sciences (MIRCSS). The conference was organised with a reference to the challenges being faced by social scientists in the field of research. The presentations on a variety of topics were staged by multiple scholars and students as well that imparted the profusion of information among the attendees of the conference. The conference was pigmented with the bulk of knowledge conveyed by different guest speakers from different universities. Apart from this magnificent chapter, the most significant thing was the university was overwhelmingly imbued with scholars.

Dr Bashir Ahmed – a guest speaker from Bahria University – extrapolated the significance of research in the field of social sciences. He said that social sciences based researches helped us keep our social assets active cum alive for good. The point he tossed before the audiences was a clear understanding of the need for research, especially in the field of social sciences.

The conferences create opportunities for students as well as researchers to be exposed to the latest studies or the trends being freshly introduced all across the world

Let’s discuss now what benefits from the conference can be reaped by people and universities. Swinging into action to crank out the papers’ (research paper) abstracts is a great triumph that students, as well as scholars, take a stab at attaining it soon after the conference’s notification is dispatched towards them. Taking initiative by people to execute the research is an onerous task for which such types of events (conferences) erupt their efforts. No matter if many of the abstracts submitted by students or scholars get rejected but it is the matter of their arduous endeavours they make for their work. The conferences create opportunities for students as well as researchers to be exposed to the latest studies or the trends being freshly introduced all across the world.

Irrefutably, the rankings of universities are evolved based on research which these types of conferences back to. The conferences play a very top-notch role in ruggedising the academic institutions in terms of research and the research, in back, pushes them ahead. The question erects here; what is the point of universities sans research ether? The institutions devoid of research are only the muddy buildings – in that muddy buildings can easily get baulked down. Thus, research plays a significant role in cementing the buildings of educational institutions. To that end, research is the cement of buildings of academic institutions. So, the conferences can only fetch the cement (research) from multiple places – people coming from different places to present their research therein the conference.

The country still needs much more efforts to put on a lot of conferences. Hurdles in their pursuit include accommodation, promotion, location, social media, catering, funding, transportation and dealing with problem delegates. These issues aggravate the environment of academia. The war against these misfits must be waged.

As a result, the research atmosphere can only be set by these research conferences. The conferences widen the ground of research where people can establish a research-based society that can help them learn from one another. Here, the words of John Mott are no exaggeration, “If I had to do it all over again, I would have had more conferences because at conferences more critical decisions are made than at any other place.”

The writer is the member of the editorial board of a Russian research journal, “Bulleting of Science and Practice.”