- Each workshop session lasts approximately one hour. Authors will make a twenty-minute presentation of their research followed by a forty-minute discussion.
- We will start the discussion with the pre-assigned discussant providing a brief critique of the project to get us started. It will be followed by brief comments made by one of the co-organizers serving as the session host. The author is then given an opportunity to respond. We will then open the floor to all other participants with the hope of starting a fruitful conversation.
- Authors will distribute their paper at least one week prior to the workshop. Working papers to be presented in the workshop should be complete and reasonably polished drafts. Reading papers in advance is obligatory only for discussants.
- The most important goal of the virtual workshop is to improve the research being discussed. As such, we urge discussants to not just point out a weakness in the project, but also suggest avenues for improvement. What could be done to make the project better?
- We will post a screenshot of the session on the website unless one of the participants objects.
- We expect reciprocity in that authors should be willing to serve as discussants on someone else’s work in the future.
- In addition to oral comments, discussants are encouraged to email comments to the author after the workshop to communicate specialized knowledge (citations, technical points that could not be covered verbally) or to point out issues that did not receive sufficient attention during the workshop session.
- One of the goals of the workshop is to build a strong HPE community, and we encourage participants to attend multiple sessions.
Note: This is a new version of the guidelines, valid since Fall 2023. The previous version was closely modeled after the guidelines of the Virtual Workshop on Authoritarian Regimes, which were inspired by the Conflict Consortium Virtual Workshop and Charles Tilly’s rules for his Workshop in Contentious Politics.