How to organise a roundtable
Roundtables allow participants to see each other's faces, which helps them engage in the conversation, hear others better, and gauge the room’s mood.
This session works best when a clear, even if broad, topic is agreed in advance.
Physical and online setup
One approach is to organise the room around three or four tables to create small group space for those interested in the same issue. This approach involves sitting in a more circular arrangement to enable greater conversation between session participants.
In an online format, think about making use of breakout rooms or similar tools within the online platform. It can aid interaction and dialogue, especially across a range of contributors.
Roundtable session formats
Roundtables can be organised in two ways: expert-led or participant-led topic choice and discussion.
Expert-led topic and discussion
- Tables are purposely organised with an 'expert' on each table.
- These experts lead discussion either on a broad question put to the session as a whole, or specific questions related to their field.
- Questions can be gathered in advance (e.g. via the session call for participation and publicity), allowing attendees to raise issues they might not otherwise are able to ask.
- All participants are also encouraged to bring their own additional issues, questions, problems or ideas to discuss with the expert and other participants.
- This type of session would run well after a more traditionally-organised paper session, giving additional time for participants to have face-to-face time with the speakers.
Participant-led topic and discussion
- This involves setting up informal discussion roundtables.
- These are particularly useful to enable people to network and share ideas around conceptual, theoretical or methodological concerns.
- To do this, convenors choose a broad overarching theme (e.g., 'participatory research') and, at the beginning of the session, brainstorm with participants about the topics they wish to discuss.
- Then divide the room into 'roundtables' of 10 participants each and assign a discussion topic to each table.
- No formal papers are presented, but each table needs a facilitator to encourage discussion, keep time and help the group stick to the topic.
Preparing the session
Experts could be invited directly, or could be selected from a complementary papers session (if one is proposed for the conference).
Participant-led topics work best when a broad, inspiring, or even controversial question is posed, and discussion questions are invited.
Since this format does not involve specific papers or speakers, the session can be proposed and advertised in advance, while the detailed content is determined on the day through group brainstorming.
Running the session on conference day
At the beginning of the session it helps to get everyone to introduce themselves very briefly (name, affiliation). This gets people used to talking in front of each other and also allows people to know who else is in the room.
For expert-led sessions, there’s no need to spend time describing the topics. Simply label each table with the expert’s name and let the group begin discussions.
If everyone chooses to sit on one table and others are empty then encourage people to spread out and rotate people around after 20 minutes of discussion.
Allow time (two to five minutes per table) for each table to feed back to the group as whole on any interesting issues, debates and ideas that they discussed.
