Being an honorary member of SERA, Marey Allyson shares her memories of the first Conference she attended, and her fondest memories over the years …

My role has been to attend the conference and learn something about Scotland and Scottish people, and feed it into my work that I was doing here in Iceland. I had been in charge of the research committee, and I had been in charge of developing the doctoral programme. In Iceland, as part of the development work that we were doing, we had created our own association for educational research, which still exists today. It was so rewarding to go to the conference because, as I used to joke, my name is Scottish; it only works in Scotland, it doesn’t work in Iceland, my name.

The people that I remember from the early days were so kind. People like Ian and Francis were very important, I think, at the time I was going there, and they welcomed me to the conference as if they had known me for a long time. It was very uplifting. When I go now, I get more hugs in one day than I get in one year in Iceland.

At the same time, our doctoral programme was starting to collect students, and I told a couple of them about SERA and how it would be a good opportunity to get used to being in a professional setting. In maybe 2005 or 2006, a young man came who was from the countryside in Iceland, and he enjoyed the Ceilidh very much. In those days it was always held in Perth, for the first few years as far as I remember and there was always a Ceilidh. But it wasn’t just fun and games, we worked hard to get there, we had very nice conversations in breaks with people, and people were very friendly. If we started talking, then they would always respond. Over the years, more and more have gone to SERA from the university here.

I was there when they turned 30; I remember the fancy dinner we had that evening in the Perth hotel. It was like a banquet with a huge purple square of people and the high table. John Nisbet was the speaker for the evening. He gave a very informative historical view and talk at that conference in 2004. At that stage, SERA was also publishing reports. Putting together statistics to illuminate different areas, and some of those documents we used a lot in our work here in Iceland. They were working on a European level, they were working on a project with some of the other agencies and so we would get everything from a very interdisciplinary view. What was also nice was the size, the location and the origins of the speakers: they were from all over Scotland. I think the biggest group we had from Iceland was 17 attendees and this was about 3 years ago.

On a personal level, with my own work and SERA, I have always tried to send in a submission and most years I have done that. We have tried all the forms, I think, about how you can present if you don’t present a paper. We have enjoyed those. Two of our regulars, they have formed a little niche area for themselves on self-study in your doctoral studies. The nearness of each other always leads to a conversation, and people aren’t spread out all over the place. The lecture rooms are not overpowering.

The size of SERA, for me, is a plus. But my favourite part, is also going to the City Councils. They always find the municipality to host the drinks evening on the first evening which has been quite nice. I have quite good memories of where people mixed and we got to see another part of Scotland by going into the mayoral rooms.

I think one change is also incumbent on the association and that is the change in the age of the people, who need to be addressed now. All of us old ones, who have retired here, there, and everywhere. There are still some possibilities for retirees to do academic work, but not much. But it is a good environment for a doctoral student to experience, so for me, that has been a plus because virtually all of the students I’ve had have gone to SERA at one time or another.

One thing I like about SERA is that it is very varied: people have all kinds of contributions, and it has kept me alive. All of these things were going on and I could tell a student ‘This good or you should try that, I have seen this or I have seen that’. I hope the addition of AI to all other information possibilities will not damage the work done by our teachers. I also remember when they started establishing networks that have done amazing work. That diversification always encouraged discussion of what was going on.

At the SERA conference, I try to go to everything because I am not obliged to any group at all. Free to choose. It was interesting, the past research what we thought maybe 10-15 years ago, it was interesting that in some of the lectures I attended, you found a lot of research but a lot of the projects being discussed were reviews. But they seem to be a large group that was looking at new things, and quite a large group of people that were looking at the old, long term research. So, it is not only a vehicle for research, but it also a vehicle for professional development.

In 50 years… that means that the kids being born now, it will be the year 2074. I am thinking about my grandchildren in America that are 11/10 or 10/9. They can do pretty much anything with technology and we are fussing about AI but we are not looking at what they children know. These children will be in power when we are in old age homes. So, research on young children with an open-mind to see what they know and what they learn and what they offer would be a good idea as well.

My words of advice would be… don’t change a lot. What you have got in your hands is gold, you have got a lot of people and have given them a safe haven for presenting their research outside their university.