Reflecting on the ongoing professionalisation of academic communication and increased opportunities for researchers to engage, Andy Tattersall argues researchers and research funders should be mindful of the communication requirements of their projects…
Category: research communication
Is Development an Art or a Science?
Reflecting on nearly twenty years of transdisciplinary practice and research and the recent publication of their new book, New Mediums, Better Messages? How Innovations in Translation, Engagement, and Advocacy are Changing International Development, Da…
2022 in review: Communicating Your Research
Research communication is a moveable feast and as varied as the media and communication channels used to reach an intended audience. This annual review pulls out eleven posts focusing on different aspects of research communication that have been featur…
When the safety of being right makes change hard – Introducing the Epistemic Bunker
It would be difficult to develop new ideas if everyone you associated with was hostile to them. The varying degrees of safety provided by the exclusion of people and ideas opposed to certain forms of knowledge is thus an often unacknowledged part of kn…
Telling the truth, uniting behind the science – Climate coalitions and science’s place in society
In recent years, a new wave of climate activist groups, such as Extinction Rebellion, Fridays for Future and the Sunrise Movement have reshaped public debates on climate action. In so doing they refer to scientific evidence. But, how exactly do they un…
The focus on misinformation leads to a profound misunderstanding of why people believe and act on bad information
Misinformation has been a prominent paradigm in the explanation of social, political, and more recently epidemiological phenomena since the middle of the last decade. However, Daniel Williams argues that a focus on misinformation is limiting when used …
Tell me what you read (or watch) and I will tell you what you research: The two-way street between science and literature
Literature and in particular science fiction is often seen as being prefigurative to the development of science and technology. Whilst this can on occasion be the case, drawing on a study of AI researchers and their reading and viewing material, Sarah …
UK in a Changing Europe: injecting social science into a polarised political debate
Reflecting on seven years of UK in a Changing Europe, Anand Menon and Jill Rutter discuss how the project has brought social science insights into the mainstream of a polarised public debate. Highlighting how this mode of engagement falls outside of or…
Fun(ny) facts: Humour as a research communication strategy
If you have read any research produced by universities, civil society organisations or think tanks, you will most likely have struggled to find any good jokes. However, throughout history, humour has played an important role in critiquing society and r…
We need better AI imagery for better science communication
Current images of AI – widely used and available in stock libraries – are dominated by tropes such as white humanoid robots, blue backgrounds, glowing brains and science fiction imagery. Research into narratives as forms of sense-making AI …