VISA LETTERS

It may be that prospective in person attendees at the conference will need a visa letter from the event organisers. We are happy to provide these on the following conditions for speakers and delegates (non-speaking attendees):

Speakers

All speakers have been through an anonymised peer review process during abstract submission and have been selected to present at the conference on the strength of their proposals. Accordingly, we will supply visa letters for in person speakers at Exeter upon request.

Delegates (non-speaking attendees)

We welcome delegates from anywhere in the world, but recognise that attending the conference in person from places far away from the UK will mean many additional costs and complexities. Indeed, one of the reasons we have online participation is to make it as easy and as cost efficient as possible for people to participate in the conference worldwide.

For people that do wish to attend in person from outside the UK, one of the more significant issues may be getting a visa, which could require an invitation letter from the conference team. We are happy to provide such letters; however, we must do so in the context of the possibility of visa fraud and the ethical responsibilities of the BSP and our academic and professional partners. 

For many years now, there have been cases of visa applications coming through to conference organisers from delegates which have subsequently been revealed as visa fraud, and such scams are on the rise. Visa fraud can be run by scam artists and people traffickers, the letters being sold on the street for exorbitant fees or – in extreme cases – being used in the movement of individuals or groups of people for forced labour, bonded labour and debt bondage, forced and early marriage, domestic servitude, sexual exploitation, and organ harvesting. Accordingly, conference organisers need to carefully manage requests for the sending of visa application letters. It is not enough to just send such letters upon request and shift the responsibility to other organisations. This is because the whole idea behind the request is to fool those organisations – and the sending of letters without some vetting could become an act of complicity. 

But conference organisers also need to be sensitive to bias with requests for the sending of visa application letters. In most cases scam requests are very easy to recognise, and many people will be familiar with the characteristics of such emails (mismatched email and organisational addresses, non-specific greetings, little awareness of the recipient, heightened sense of immediacy, spelling and grammatical errors). So, in order to mitigate any possible misperception we ask potential delegates who wish to attend the conference in person to follow the below process when requesting visa letters. Doing so will make the everything easier and quicker for all concerned; protect legitimate requests and mean the requestor is much more likely to succeed in their visa application; and – above all – help defend against exploitation. 

1: Email and Registration information: 

(a) If you can, please use the email address of your academic or professional affiliation and provide a link to that institution; if you cannot do both or either for any reason please let us know your circumstances. 

(b) If the delegate name is or will be different from the name of conference fee payee and/or the delegate location is different from that of the location of conference fee payee details, please let us know the circumstances.

2: Statement for inclusion in your visa letter:

Please supply a short paragraph with an overview of:

(a) Your background in the philosophy of phenomenology and any research you have done in this area. Details and links to any published articles are excellent evidence of research and should be included if available. 

(b) The reason for you specifically wishing to attend the conference ‘Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality’. For instance, which themes are you particularly interested in from the event overview, and how will this impact your future research, publications, or practice.