Advice for Workshop Directors

This guide provides helpful information and suggestions for planning and running your Workshop at the Joint Sessions 2025, based on previous Directors' advice.

If you have any further queries, please get in touch with our Events Team.

Planning

Workshop Directors are expected to:

Schedule Papers and assign discussants for the week.
Establish contact with each participant ahead of the event.
Share schedules and Workshop-specific information with the participants.
Follow up with participants to ensure they have uploaded full Papers ahead of the event.
Ensure that all participants have equal time to present and discuss.
Encourage networking and discussions outside of the Workshop.

Please establish contact with the Paper Presenters before the Workshop. You can retrieve the contact details via My Events in My ECPR. Click Full Details to navigate to the main page. From there, click Export Participant Details to download an Excel spreadsheet containing contact information.

ECPR can offer guidance on Workshop format and social activities, however, it is expected that the Directors coordinate these.

Scheduling

Each Workshop should last the full duration of the Joint Sessions which is Tuesday 20 – Friday 23 May 2025.

All workshops will take place at Charles University in Prague and should be scheduled in CET time.

There will be two coffee breaks held daily at 10:30 – 11:00 and 15:00 – 15:30 which you will need to incorporate into your schedules. Lunch break is scheduled from 12:30 – 13:30 however you may choose to move this time to better align with your programming.

The Workshop Director is responsible for starting and concluding the session on time.

Make use of time warnings and forewarn Presenters, signposting when they have 5 minutes remaining, 1 minute remaining, and when it's time to stop.
Move the discussion forward when the Presenter has reached their time limit.
Allocate sufficient time to each Presenter but keep them to schedule.

Below is an example of how a Workshop can be organised.
Five Papers per day with one hour for each Paper to include:

15-minute presentation
15-minute discussant-led questions*
30-minute open discussion

*Each Paper Presenter is expected to take turns to serve as a Discussant.

Please ensure you have shared your schedule with your participants and send us the most up-to-date version for our system.

Ahead of the event

Workshop Director should download all Papers ahead of the event. This can be done via our event app.

Log in to the event app using the same email address and password as the one you have registered for the event with.
Select the Papers tab under Programme.
By clicking on each Paper individually, you'll find the Download Full Paper button below the Panel information. This will grant you access to the complete Paper as a PDF.

If a participant has not uploaded/shared their Paper with you before the Workshop, please follow-up with them directly.

While we will send out our Know Before You Go guide before the event to all participants, you may wish to send an email to your participants with Workshop specific information.

On the day

Equipment

All rooms have access to a projector with a HDMI/USBC connection. Please note laptops will not be provided, so it is important you bring your own with the appropriate charger and EU adaptors.

Participation and safety

Please mark the attendance of your Workshop participants daily in case of an emergency. Instructions on where to mark the attendance will be included on the information sheet in your Workshop room.
Set the tone at the start of the Workshop and allow for any expectations or open questions to be answered and/or taken into consideration.
Make use of all time allocated and encourage a less structured, general conversation at the beginning or end of the day if you have any spare time.
Encourage Workshop participants to network outside of the sessions - you may like to set up a group Slack or WhatsApp to connect.

Continue the conversation on social media using #ecprjs25

Discuss topics and pose questions to Workshop members and their wider network to foster a deeper discussion and collaboration.

Install the app