Those oxfords are so sweet! I’d wear those with a business suit any day, and I’m not prone to androgeny.

I have those Franco’s! They’re fantastic work shoes.

Suz –

I am a forest ecologist, and while I don’t particularly identify as butch these days, I certainly have in the past. Going more in the direction of a k.d. lang-esque dapper butch look as compared to your typical crunchy butch aesthetic is the right idea for a scientific conference, but keep in mind that you’ll be presenting to fellow ecologists. You want to look professional, but not so polished that they question whether you’re comfortable out in the field.

Also, if you don’t wear heels on anything approximating a regular basis, don’t buy something with a substantial heel and put yourself through giving presentations and walking around with potential colleagues/employers while you’re both breaking in a new pair of shoes and getting accustomed/reaccustomed to walking in heels. I did this for an interview with a environmental consulting firm, and I’m fairly well convinced it lost me the job.

I have had very good luck with Clarks, and I’m wondering if an ankle boot with a moderate heel, either from Clarks or somewhere else with a similar but slightly more polished aesthetic, would do the trick. Boots inspire confidence and can be very stylishly androgynous.

The oxford is beautiful well made shoe for the tailored suit. However a chill goes down my spine when I look at it. I break out in cold sweat for fear of not having being able to spell transubstantiation.

The Gravati is a nun shoe.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. When I was in school–before the wheel was invented–these are the kind of shoes the old lady teachers wore. I bought some when I was 19 and loved them!

What a fantastic post. Truly the Manolo is up to any shoe challenge put before him. And truly will answer with both hilarity and good taste.
Having been to a few academic conferences in my life I can attest to the difficulty some of my more Teva-inclined colleagues have in cleaning up enough to give a paper. The best bet is something comfortable for a long day of shmoozing and paper-giving, that will look fine with the suit. I would suggest that a hiking-boot-loving ecologist might be sorry midway through the day for having picked a heel higher than one inch. Much better to rock a good laceup flat and have energy after the day to still go out to dinner with the important ecologists you just met.
I was once witness to a poor grad student’s full-on crying, yelling, shoe meltdown in the women’s restroom of a major academic conference. She had a job interview later that day and had suddenly decided her shoes (rather fussy ruffly black high heels perhaps more appropriate to a dinner date) were so inappropriate that she would not be able to keep it together for the interview. The other women in the restroom had to talk her back down to sanity.

While I personally shop John Fluevog for the ultra girly styles he offers, I can attest to the fact that Fluevog also carries many unisex he/she styles, which would be a good investment for the student who would also like a little funk in his/her life.

http://www.fluevog.com/