Crossing Borders
- Isin Acun
- Jul 2
- 5 min read
A field report from EMAC 2026 in Bath and the ISMS Marketing Science Conference 2026 in Lisbon written by Işın Acun, Ph.D. candidate at WU Vienna
This June the marketing community met twice in the space of two weeks, and both times in Europe. First in Bath, for the 55th EMAC Annual Conference at the University of Bath, and then in Lisbon, for the ISMS Marketing Science Conference at Nova SBE. Two conferences, two countries, and a field whose research keeps crossing borders of its own.
Bath: EMAC and the age of data
EMAC opened, as it does every year, with the doctoral colloquium and a job market simulation, which between them are some of the best opportunities the conference offers PhD students. The colloquium is for those not yet on the market: in a roughly one-hour slot you get detailed feedback on your project, with separate beginner and advanced tracks depending on how far along you are. The job market simulation, in turn, is aimed at final-year students, walking them through mock interviews and job talks before the real thing. These events are invaluable if you are a PhD student. What makes them valuable is the kind of attention you rarely get otherwise: a senior researcher from outside your circle reading your work closely and telling you, early and candidly, what is and isn’t working, while there is still time to change course.
Four days of parallel tracks followed, under the theme “transformations of marketing research and practice in the age of data.” Two subjects dominated. Sustainability ran deep, with sessions on green claims and greenwashing, on the circular economy of repairing and reselling rather than discarding, and on how to nudge greener choices without preaching. AI was everywhere too, both as a subject of study, in sessions on generative AI, consumer-AI interaction, and creativity in the age of AI, and as a tool that is already changing how research gets done. Between them, the two filled the fullest rooms of the week.
That second role, AI as a working tool, was also what the “meet the editors” sessions kept circling back to. Editors spoke candidly about what they look for, and the question of how to do, and publish, good research in the age of AI came up again and again. Underneath the enthusiasm sat a real worry about how fast the tools, and the data behind them, are changing, and what that means for how we work.
Bath itself was worth the trip: a compact, walkable city of Georgian terraces and Roman remains, set on green hills.
The conference dinner then took us somewhere I did not have on my bingo card: Bath Racecourse. Instead of a sit-down meal there were food and drink stands dotted around the track, and between them we watched a real horse race under reliably grey English skies. Later a very good DJ took over and worked his way from 60s and 70s classics all the way to the 2020s by the end of the night.
Lisbon: Marketing Science by the Atlantic
A week later the field reassembled at Nova SBE, whose campus sits right on the coast at Carcavelos, just outside Lisbon. Marketing Science keeps a faster tempo, with more than twelve parallel tracks and flash talks measured in minutes, and a narrower methodological focus. While EMAC spans both managerial and consumer behavior work and methodological diversity; by tradition, Marketing Science remains a quantitative matchup. Even so, many of the same faces turned up in both cities, among them a sizeable WU Vienna group.
Lisbon was an easy place to spend a week. Conference/ sessions were a short ride from the city's tiled streets and trams. The ocean was so close that Nova students kept wandering past in wetsuits, heading to or from the surf between study sessions. After the cool of Bath, the warmth alone created a distinct conference tone.
When marketing meets policy
The other strong current at both conferences was public policy. Each ran dedicated “Marketing and Public Policy” sessions, on platform regulation, privacy, and market structure, and that is where my two talks fit. In Bath I presented work on European digital services taxes, the levies meant to make large platforms pay a fairer share. In Lisbon, a project on the US decision to end its “de minimis” duty-free exemption and what that did to cross-border sellers. Without quite planning it, I had brought a European tax on American technology to Europe, and an American tax on the rest of the world to the more American conference. Opposite shores, but the same underlying question: who really bears the cost when online markets are taxed across borders.
Between the sessions
Much of a conference, of course, happens away from the podium. Over coffee breaks and shared meals, papers I had only read turned into people, and more than one collaboration was nudged forward.
The Women's Lunch at the Marketing Science Conference, hosted by Nova SBE, was a highlight. The setup is simple: each table brings together one full professor and one associate professor with around ten PhD students, and the conversation turns to careers, networking, and the challenges that women in particular face in academia. It was useful in a way panels rarely are: frank, specific advice from women a few steps ahead, on the kind of thing you cannot easily raise in a public Q&A, from negotiating an offer to staying visible early on. I wish every conference did something similar.
The conference dinner, meanwhile, took over LX Factory, a converted industrial complex of restaurants and street art in Lisbon, with a live Fado show that ran late into the warm summer evening.
What stayed with me
I came home thinking the questions are only getting bigger. Platforms, privacy, sustainability, public policy: marketing now treats these as central concerns, and it has something real to add to them. We look closely at how consumers actually behave, and at how firms and platforms react, which is often the missing piece in the policy debates about regulation and AI.
I’ll remember equally the space both conferences made for early‑career scholars. EMAC featured a doctoral colloquium and job market simulation; at Marketing Science, the Women's Lunch, and senior colleagues lingering in doctoral sessions beyond any requirement made an impression. The field is asking harder questions than ever, but it still makes time for the people who will respond to these challenges in the future.
This article was written by
Işın Acun
Ph.D. candidate at the WU, Vienna
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