I will not have the opportunity to attend all the conferences I would like, and have attended the previous years, this year - at least not physically - due to a lack of funding. My employer University of Stavanger (UIS) will only cover one conference participation this year, whereas I have had ca. 3-5 funded per year the last few years - a quite drastic change for me. As a professor, and a researcher who has at some points in the last few years been the most active at my faculty (Faculty of social sciences) regarding international conference presentations, I find this development worrisome - I feel I do not get the funding and support I need to do my job as well as I can. Some of these events it seems I can attend digitally, but I know from experience that that is not the same thing as attending physically.
I applied for external funding for conference participation from Nansenfondet, but have now been notified I did not get any funding.
I will now have to tell the organizers of the world congress of semiotics, in Poland, that I will not be able to attend, despite being a member of the world congress´ scientific committee. Moreover, I will have to attend the Gathering in biosemiotics, in South Africa, and the world congress in environmental history, in Finland, digitally in stead of physically.
