Engaging in the SEA Community

Editorial Notes

Abstract

I’ve recently returned from St. Andrews, 
Scotland and the Center for Social and 
Environmental Accounting Research’s 
(CSEAR) 22nd annual summer congress.  
It was the third CSEAR-sponsored con
ference I’ve been lucky enough to attend 
over the last year, following the Austral
asian CSEAR in Christchurch, New Zea
land last December, and a much chillier 
than hoped for North American meeting 
in Orlando, Florida in January.  Al
though I am a relative neophyte with 
respect to CSEAR-sponsored get
togethers (I attended my first in the sum
mer of 2008), I concede that I’ve be
come addicted to the events. 
I’ve always believed that attending, and 
presenting, at academic conferences is 
(or at least ought to be) a valuable pro
fessional experience.  But to be honest, 
I’d grown increasingly frustrated with 
the lack of interesting sessions at the 
regional and national American Ac
counting Association meetings that were 
the mainstay of my conference diet.  The 
problem, of course, is that as a social 
and environmental accounting (SEA) 
researcher, I find myself a member of a 
very small minority of the North Ameri
can, and even more specifically, the U.S. 
academic accounting community.  Often 
were the times that at regional meetings 
the only paper with an SEA-related con
tent was the one I was presenting.