NEWSLETTER

FOUR GREAT SPEAKERS WE MET AT THE MCAA GENERAL CONFERENCE

 

“How much talent is wasted with the wars in the Middle East, wherethere is physical and military violence. And what Mr Trump is doing in the United States is also a form of violence that doesn’t favour scientific development in my opinion,” he mused. It is therefore crucial for the scientific community to stay united for the sake of the future and events like the MCAA annual conference are a good opportunity to reinforce this sentiment, Mr Tobback suggested.

 

 

 

Professor Dehue told us when we met after her session. She believes it is very important to put the definitions and the figures arising from those definitions into perspective. The mental health disorders seen among PhD students are a good example: “You can say PhD students suffer from depression. If we do so, we don’t ask, “what about the system in which PhD students have to work? Little money, having to travel all over the world, no job security, and no building up of a pension if you don’t have a regular job.” Although we are only talking about mental disorders, shouldn’t we also call that injustice?”. Tackling the uncertainty inherent within the academic world could thereforebe a first step to tackling mental  disorders among PhD students, Professor Dehue concluded.

 

 

be entrepreneurial and go for it! If you want to learn what a business model is, what finance is, what marketing is, what branding is, how to tell stories, how to sell your business, your product, then go for it!” To him, researchers are already entrepreneurial in that they commit their career to their research without knowing the outcome. Business entrepreneurship involves some adaptation. But for researchers, “the sky is the limit!”.

 

 

research project, and maybe they could come back to us and involve us,” he says. In this sense, “Sharing is caring”.

 

 

 

 

GETTING STARTED IN PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT

 

 

 

Both Dominika and I shared our experiences of getting involved by just saying ‘yes’ the first time an opportunity came up. The easiest way is to get involved is to say yes to something that someone asks you to do, whether that be speaking to a group of adults one evening, going to a school as part of a careers fair, or writing an opinion piece for a newspaper. This way someone else is going to do a lot of the organisational work (the teacher, your lab-mate, the university, the editor…). Hopefully it will go well, and you’ll be starting on your own engagement journey, but if you don’t enjoy it, you don’t ever have to do it again. At least you tried!

Try things out

As you get more comfortable with engagement, you can try some new ways to communicate and engage. There are so many options available to you and what you will be good at might depend on all sorts of factors, like the time you have available and your other hobbies, interests and skills. As it turns out, after many years of giving workshops in schools and public presentations, I realised I’m not that great at presenting science, but I am brilliant at managing things, and bringing people together to work on a project together. So now, that’s the role I take. You might find that you don’t enjoy live radio interviews, but you love to record podcasts, or you really don’t enjoy writing for blogs but you do get a lot out of twitter. If you are already in an amateur theatre group, you might like to work with them on creating a play that involves your research. Having a go is really the best way to see what suits you.

 

Practice

Good engagement and communication are like any other skills – they take practice. You wouldn’t expect a band to go on stage without rehearsing, so why would someone giving a talk do that? Work on your talks, your writing, your presentation skills, your comedy skills, dancing, drawing, whatever you need to make your activity high quality. That way both you and your audience will get the most from it.

 

Say no

I know, I know, I already told you to say ‘yes’. But engagement stops being enjoyable once you are under too much pressure, and certainly for those of you in academia there are already many other pressures on your time. Prioritise what you get involved with based on you interests, time and values, so that you can be at your best. Your public will thank you for it!

 

The questions…

Many grant applications or job roles now expect me to include public engagement in my work, but it’s not something I have much experience with, it’s not my thing. What can I do?

Collaborate. Collaboration is the best way to make sure your first ventures in engagement go well. It might be that you can work with others in your department on an activity they have already set up, or that you might work with an outreach programme from your university or institution that has existing public events, or that you have a friend who leads a dance class who are interested to do something with your work. If you have those other interested and experienced people around you, making something work for you won’t be too hard.

 

Do you think science communication is something every researcher should be made to do?

No. Fundamentally no. Once this work becomes something that is enforced, then the joy will be sucked out of it, the researcher will resent it, and the audience will respond badly. The research, including my own, backs this up. However, I do believe that everyone can find a type of public engagement that works for them with a little help and that academia should have a general culture of engagement that supports this work in order to do its best for society. If you don’t have a local public engagement officer or network to help you find what works for you, feel free to get in touch!

 

What about difficult subjects, such as the use of animals in research? Might we not be at risk if we talk about this; after all, some labs have been attacked.

Involving the public in discussions about research is the best way to counteract the negative opinions on subjects like this. Until recently, research, particularly science, was often done behind closed doors, making it difficult for the public to know why it is done the way it is, and even more difficult to trust the outcomes. Engaged research means that researchers are seen as people, with lives, families, hobbies, and this makes science much more part of everyday life. In turn, this means that the decisions researchers make, such as who to include in a clinical trial, whether to spend money on launching a satellite, to turn on the Large Hadron
Collider, or explore the impacts of a new treatment on animals prior to human testing, make much more sense and are more easily empathised with. That’s not to say that there won’t ever be extremists who take extraordinary actions, but it becomes increasingly unlikely and importantly they won’t have public support.

 

I’d like a career in science communication, but it seems like the competition is high. How can I get my first break?

A tricky one! Keep trying… you will get there eventually. You can improve your chances by contacting the job advertisers ahead of application to learn their values and interests so you can tailor your application accordingly. Include evidence of your activity, such as hyperlinks to videos or websites that include elements of your work, or perhaps send in a portfolio or images to support your application. The three most common mistakes I’ve come across when reviewing applications are quite simple to avoid and might really help. The first is to remember that there are lots of people out there who do science communication in a variety of ways. I’ve received hundreds of applications from people who have told me that they are the first person to think of having a fun approach to science for kids, or a science podcast. Take the time to research what else people are doing and frame your experience in that context. I would have been impressed to hear why those people thought their approaches were different from others, or how they built on existing knowledge. Secondly, look up the organisation you are applying to, to find out what they do and how they do it. And as mentioned, ring them up and ask. I’ve done too many interviews with people who don’t really know what we do, or even can’t remember the name of the organisation. Nerves and forgetfulness are fine, but laziness isn’t. Finally, CV’s for jobs outside of academia should be no more than 2 sides of A4. It’s not a lot of room, I know, but honestly, if I get 100 applications, I don’t have time to read your publication list. Keep the information recent and relevant.

 

How can I get my organisation to be more supportive of public engagement and sci com?

Great question... I might have to do another post about that! There were more questions, and lots of suggestions for ways you can get involved. Sense about Science is running its #askforevidence campaign, as well as workshops to help you stand up for science. Pint of Science is expanding, and there's maybe a Bright Club near you. Whatever you get involved with, I hope you enjoy it!

 

 

 

SPECIAL COVERAGE

GENERAL ASSEMBLY

 

'' I ATTENDED MY FIRST MCAA GENERAL ASSEMBLY AND IT WAS GREAT" 

 

 

 

 Open Science, employability of the current PhD surplus, the limited amount of permanent positions in academia, and academic refugees. One of the speakers highlighted the uneven flux of researchers to and from specific countries. Spain is just one example: the number of early stage researchers leaving is several times bigger than the number of early stage researchers entering. Being one of those, and noticing that I didn't meet a single other Swedish researcher during the meeting, while I on the other hand met several Spanish and Italians and Indians (and a surprisingly large number of Argentinians), underlined this. Next year the MCAA General Assembly will be held in Vienna and I am already looking forward to going there and I highly recommend that you do too!