Networked digital platforms have destabilised and reconfigured long-established forms of knowledge production and communication, changing the ways in which we consume media and engage with the public sphere and expert knowledge. In this extract from th…
Category: Public Engagement
Why don’t you publish your research here?
Justin Gest author of Mass Appeal: Communicating Policy Ideas in Multiple Media asks why not publish your research outside of academic outlets? And, suggests academic institutions need to engage more creatively with an increasingly diverse range of mul…
Blocked and thwarted – Public engagement professionals in higher education deserve greater recognition.
Professional service staff specialising in public engagement in higher education institutions often occupy precarious and poorly defined positions. Drawing on a largescale qualitative study of public engagement professionals (PEPs), Richard Watermeyer …
Communicating statistics through the media in the time of COVID-19
Professor Kevin McConway and Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter discuss their experiences of communicating statistical research to the media and offer 12 tips for researchers to effectively engage with the media. The coronavirus pandemic has brought an unprecedented demand from the media for statistical commentary. Whereas a trip to a studio for a radio or TV interview was … Continued
Researchers are expected to share their research beyond academia but they need support from universities to do so
Sharing research beyond academia is not only rewarding and enriching, but increasingly can help achieve funding. However, early career researchers lack the time, skills and media savvy to do so. Margaret Merga and Shannon Mason outline the experiences of early career researchers in Australia and Japan. The authors urge institutions to look beyond traditional scholarly … Continued
Researcher Activism – Reflections on a career
As recent events, such as the Black Lives Matter protests, have demonstrated academic research and researchers often play important roles in activist movements. Drawing on her own experience as a researcher activist, Dorothy Broom consider how to engage effectively with the different identities and responsibilities engendered by researcher activism and presents six starting points for a wider … Continued
“Success is not measured in how inspired we are” – Reassessing artist-academic collaborations under neoliberalism
Funding bodies and universities prize collaboration with non-academic partners. But do they create the conditions for equitable relationships? Sara de Jong and Alena Pfoser argue that however inspiring and innovative artist-academic collaborations can be, it is necessary to critically interrogate the conditions under which such collaborations take place. Highlighting the effects of, different remuneration structures, … Continued
The future of public intellectualism lies in reforming the digital public sphere
Public intellectuals as they have traditionally been perceived, as individual scholars speaking truth to power, are a declining feature of public life. Responding to the centrality of digital communication in the public sphere Mark Murphy and Cristina Costa, argue that academia needs to further value and prioritise engagement with the digital public sphere and that beyond simply taking its forms […]
Who are stakeholders in research? A Science and Technology Studies approach to navigating research impact
The early engagement of ‘stakeholders’ in research is often presented as a simple way to ensure that research is aligned to the needs of research users and therefore impactful. However, who these stakeholders are and what their interests might be is not always obvious. In this post Robert Borst and Annette Boaz reflect on their research on stakeholder engagement as part of a larger European […]
Creating Impact with Apps – The Rainy Day Project
Mobile phone applications, Apps, have become a common feature of day to day life. However, their application to social research is only beginning to be experimented with and understood. In this post Wasim Ahmed, discusses The Rainy Day Project, a research project that from the outset was designed to employ an app and considers the how the inclusion of app […]