Isolating the concept of ‘engagement’ across different academic contexts helped revealed that, though a popularly associated word across disciplines and practices, our academic understanding of ‘engagement’ is limited and incomplete. This summarises the message derived from the range of presentations from academics in the fields of psychology, education, law, business management and marketing at the 1st International Conference of Multidisciplinary Engagement which was held from January 15-17th at St Mary’s University.

​

ICME 2018 was the first initiative of the Engagement Research Group founded by Education and Social Sciences Lecturer Dr Melissa R. Jogie at St Mary’s University. The event was considered to be extremely informative and thought provoking; highlighting many possibilities for future developments in terms of outputs, networks, impact and space for further collaborative ventures on issues of engagement. The three day event was well-attended with both local and international academics, coming in from as far as Australia and India to share their work in relation to engagement. 

​

After grappling with the question of ‘what is engagement’ the keynote titled ‘Confronting the commonalities between little ‘e’ and big ‘E’ (eE) Engagement’ was delivered by the conference organiser and founder of the Engagement Research Group, Dr Melissa Jogie and was extremely well-received by her scholarly peers. Dr Jogie commented that: ‘this proved to be an appropriate platform from which to launch my characterisation of engagement as a measure of the quality of strength of relationships- which appeals ubiquitously across all academic disciplines as a foundation to build on the dynamics and optimisation of engagement.’