• Air travel has a significant impact on carbon emissions. Academic activities – such as traveling internationally for conferences – contribute to these emissions.

• Researchers need to consider the carbon impact of their own activities – but there can be barriers to making changes.

• We reflect, as a team within ACCESS, on our own decisions related to international conference travel – our intention was to travel as a group to Barcelona, Spain (from the United Kingdom) by train

• For various reasons however, we did not travel as a group by train – one of us decided not to attend the conference, one of us travelled using a mix of train and air travel, while two of us took air travel.

• We discuss some of the things that influenced our decisions – such as practical factors (time, costs), personal factors (confidence, gender, language skills), and structural factors (poor booking systems, visa requirements)

• Shifting research-related travel practices requires systemic change – we should avoid putting all blame and responsibility onto individual researchers

• Navigating these tensions are challenging – we need to reduce the carbon impact of research activities, but we also need to consider issues of equity and not ‘accidentally’ exclude some individuals from activities as we transition towards net-zero societies