Ahh, conferences. They can be deeply informative and a lot of fun – but they can be a headache too! One point of pain in attending conferences is the application stage, where you send off an abstract of your work together with information about yourself and hope to be allotted a poster presentation or a coveted talk. If you're applying for conferences and finding this to be a stressful experience, don't worry, you're not alone! Here are five of the biggest struggles that academics face when applying for conferences.

Conference Monkey is proud to introduce the winner of the ESD Conference Invitation. Conference Monkey invited one lucky participant to our partner conference, Economics and Social Development Conference, which took place in Prague. Meet Elmira Mirguseinova from Lithuania. 1. Could you introduce your academic background?