How to organise an ‘ideation’ workshop in academia? Reflections on our recent experience

Workshops often enable a level of collaboration that traditional conferences cannot match. It’s no wonder that workshops have become a regular feature on our academic calendars (for instance, BISA working groups organise regular workshops, and BISA and ISA teamed up to organise their first joint workshops in November 2025).

But is it possible to move away from the traditional ‘paper presentation’ format of workshops in academia? Are there more innovative ways of designing a workshop in order to facilitate the exchange of ideas between participants, especially when the goal is not a collective publication? In this blog post, we reflect on our experience of organising such a workshop and we share some of our insights on how to make it successful.

What is an ‘ideation’ workshop, and why did we need one?

Our ‘problem’ was simple: in the absence of a subfield of critical terrorism studies on France, we wanted to bring together scholars at different stages of their careers to start a structured collaboration. While a number of colleagues from different disciplines produce critical analyses on French counterterrorism, there are no sustained interactions between them and they remain disconnected from similar debates happening in the (predominantly anglo-saxon) field of Critical Terrorism Studies.

We were lucky to secure some funding to organise a workshop over a day and a half, and we invited scholars either directly or via a call for participants. When applying, participants were invited to explain how their research could contribute to the collective conversation we wanted to start.

When sitting down to design the workshop, it quickly became clear to us that the ‘traditional’ workshop format based on presentations of papers followed by feedback was not appropriate for our purpose. The primary goal was not a Special Issue or an edited volume. We wanted to start (not conclude) a conversation, without assuming too much about what our participants were interested in, or what our collaboration could look like in the future.

This is why we took some inspiration from ‘ideation’ workshops (without following this model too strictly). Ideation workshops are designed to collectively generate ideas. They are often presented (in the rather lofty words of the corporate world) as ‘judgement-free’ or ‘safe spaces’, which means that the primary purpose is to elicit a range of ideas regardless of their ‘author’, and without preconceived results in mind. Once this is achieved, the group can move to a second phase of ‘convergence’.

Designing the different steps: before, during and after the workshop

There are plenty of ideas online on how to design an ideation workshop, but these are mainly responding to corporate needs (for instance: generating ideas about a new product or service). As a consequence, we took inspiration from these but radically adapted them for our purpose.

We organised our workshop into different tasks, progressively building on what was emerging in a scaffolded manner. We also made clear to our participants that we would be adapting these tasks (and the duration we had in mind for each of them) based on how things unfolded. 

To present our workshop format, it is useful to think about 3 different ‘moments’.

Before the workshop

To achieve our objectives, we wanted our participants to feel as comfortable as possible with each other, but also to come prepared to share their ideas. To do so, we asked our participants to write down a short bio and the key questions and topics they were exploring in their research, and to share these with the group on our shared platform in advance of the workshop (we used MIRO, but Padlet or just a shared document would work). This facilitation of exchanges before in-person meetings is common in teaching but not standard practice for an academic workshop.

When doing these small tasks, participants started interacting with each other in advance of the workshop (for instance by identifying commonalities between them and mentioning them in their respective bios). Participants welcomed the opportunity to get to know one another before the workshop by introducing themselves through this (quite unfamiliar) tool, and we received excellent feedback on this. We also asked them to prepare for two of our activities - disciplinary perspectives and publication ideas - without sharing them with the group.

Our first interaction was also meant to be as informal as possible, so we started our workshop with a lunch. This helped everyone to start getting to know each other in person. 

During the workshop

We began the workshop by asking everyone to briefly introduce their research and what motivates them in their work (taking advantage of the earlier opportunities for personal introductions in order to jump right in). We then divided participants into small groups and asked them to reflect on the short presentations by identifying some key themes that they thought best reflected the research interests of our group. This served to increase engagement between participants and to give us an idea of what we were collectively interested in. In the following activity, we asked our participants to reflect on the ‘added-value’ and limitations of their discipline when it comes to doing research on French counterterrorism, and to share these with the group.

At the end of the first half-day, it became clear that most participants saw some value in our initiative and expressed their desire to continue working together. So we started the second day with a quick brainstorm about what, as a group, we would need to do to keep this momentum going. Our participants identified some ideas that we had already considered (collective publication, funding) but also others that we had not thought about (such as the creation of a ‘network’ with regular seminars, newsletter, and a collective approach to media engagements, or the writing of a manifesto establishing the rationale for our group). We built on these and explored them in greater detail in the rest of our workshop, adapting our format along the way to better suit these emerging ideas. We concluded our second day with a ‘who does what’ session in order to delegate the different tasks identified.

After the workshop

Our main task after the workshop was to organise a shared drive to enable collaboration to continue along the lines discussed in the workshop. We also agreed on a follow-up meeting for the group in order to take stock of our progress. 

Successes and pitfalls

As convenors, we think that our workshop has achieved its goals: our conversations were open, productive and structured at the same time. We had a greater sense of cohesion at the end of the workshop, and a clear plan for our future collaboration. One particular success was the emergence of ideas we hadn’t anticipated. The feedback we received from participants also suggests that the workshop’s format, as well as its content, was successful, well-received and fostered strong engagement.

Of course, such a workshop comes with its own challenges. Success will depend on the level of engagement of participants (in a way that is similar yet more crucial than for ‘traditional’ workshops). Similarly, designing such a format to suit the needs of the group and of our initiative proved to be time-consuming. During the workshop, we also had to remain highly flexible and adapt our format depending on what emerged in the room.

Overall, we still see ‘traditional’ workshops as valuable and particularly useful for the preparation of special issues or joint publications (indeed, we are looking forward to organising some of those in the future!). But if the goal is to create a space for ideas to emerge and if the final outcome remains more open-ended, we feel that our ‘ideation’ workshop offers an ideal format for collective thinking.

Xavier Mathieu (University of Sheffield, UK) and Marine Guéguin (Leeds Beckett University, UK)