By Ali Mashraf

Dhaka Law Review (DHLR), the first of its kind law journal of Bangladesh, organized a learning session on ‘Practical Guide to Writing and Editing a Conference Paper’, at the Department of Law, University of Dhaka (DU) on August 5, 2019. Ms. Manjida Ahamed, Ph.D. candidate and Lecturer, Middlesex University, London, facilitated the session. The session was designed exclusively for law students of DU.

At the onset, Ms. Ahamed gave a brief overview of the various academic conferences held across the globe and the types of papers sought by such conferences. She urged the participants to tailor the abstracts of their papers according to the themes and sub-themes of the conferences and different panels of such conferences to increase the chances of their acceptance. She also cautioned the participants to never be
disheartened by rejections since rejections were not always based on the quality of the abstracts submitted, rather on multiple factors, some beyond the control of the authors.

She then focused on the dos and don’ts of writing an abstract of a conference paper and asked the students to write an abstract of 300 words. Following the exercise, she provided detailed feedback on the works of the participants and shared her tips on the ways to write flawless abstracts. Furthermore, she stressed upon the importance of thoroughly revising a paper to ensure that it fulfilled all the submission criteria of the conference before turning it in. In this connection, she asked the participants to always
get their paper reviewed by others, even by their peers.

The last segment of the workshop consisted of an exercise of editing an 800-word article by the participants. Ms. Ahamed informed the participants regarding the proper format and structure of writing articles. She urged the participants to think of the readers and to construct simple sentences while writing. Towards the end, she reminded the participants to always use proper referencing style in articles to avoid plagiarism.

DHLR aims to host similar learning sessions for law students in the near future.

Event covered by Ali Mashraf, student of law at the University of Dhaka