Recently I came across a report from Switzerland on a piece of research that mapped the public engagement activities of all the research staff at the University of Lausanne, having asked them about their attitudes towards it and experiences of it. They boiled their conclusions down to what they call five paradoxes of public engagement:

- researchers feel that it's important, but they don't do as much of it as this would lead you to expect;

- they feel it's worthwhile even though they get no credit for it (it hardly benefits their career);

- most do try to share the insights from their research, despite the fact that it's a tough thing to do;

- but they tend to communicate more with the publics that already have easy access to research findings (professionals, decision-makers and the media) instead of with those who don't (the general public, schools and young people);

- surprisingly (?) the people who do most public engagement are also the people who communicate more with their peers (i.e. who publish more academic articles).

Is it reassuring to know that even in Switzerland my experience seems fairly typical?

Not sure, as they don't come up with an easy solution, except to recommend that more training, support, reward, etc. should be forthcoming for researchers who want to engage with the public. Less than half of the Lausanne researchers, for instance, had had any dealings with the university press office - generally, researchers made their own approaches to the media. So media training courses like the one Liz blogged about here would be useful for many of us.

But there's an argument that says we should be able to expect support from professionals in communications and knowledge transfer - after all, our universities employ plenty of them! Should it not be a matter of routine, at a certain point during your research, that you're prompted by your press office or KT manager to say what support you'd like/need in order to get a message out? Or maybe it is where you work?

It’s fair to say the majority of this workshop was focused on examples from local research staff associations rather than the Guide to Research Staff Associations. I guess this a reflection that the guide hasn’t yet been published so few people have had a chance to read it. However, the workshop still provided some very useful experiences from those running Research Staff Associations and a taster of what the guide will contain.

The workshop kicked off with an Introduction to the Guide by Rob Hardwick from the University of Leicester, the author of the guide. Rob explained the purpose of the guide which is:

• To provide a resource for those interested in starting and sustaining a Research Staff Association (RSA).
• To describe common RSA models.
• To capture researchers’ experiences of RSAs from the UKRSA/Vitae survey of RSAs and case studies from existing RSAs.

Rob then outlined the main reasons for starting an RSA expressed in the UKRSA/Vitae survey. These were; providing opportunities for research staff to network and collaborate, giving practical support to researchers, influencing policy and simply the experience of running an RSA. He then outlined the two main types of RSAs, namely Faculty and Department discipline based RSAs and University and Multi-Institutional RSAs.

He explained that Faculty and Department RSAs are typically run by ‘local’ researchers for colleagues and are usually found in large departments focused on specific disciplines. These are valuable in establishing dialogue between individual researchers and senior management. An example of this type of RSA is the Little France postdoctoral Society at the University of Edinburgh (http://www.lfpds.ed.ac.uk/).

Rob went on to say that University and Multi-Institutional RSAs tend to have a greater number and diversity of members (cross-discipline) and tend to function in advisory roles. This can be a good model for smaller departments to implement and a good example of this model is given by the Research Staff Reps Committee at the University of Bristol (http://www.bris.ac.uk/researchstaff/reps/).

Rob also described the role UKRSA, supported by Vitae which is the national RSA for the UK. The UKRSA supports the development of local and regional RSAs, provides a collective voice on research staff issues and represents research staff with national stakeholders.

Rob’s concluding advice on establishing RSAs were:

• Define the objectives of your RSA.
• Build the committee.
• Publicise your RSA.
• Develop stakeholder partnerships.
• Identify sources of funding.
• Seek help from the faculty or university careers service.

Rob finished by outlining the main challenges to running a sustainable RSA. These included researcher apathy, resulting in reluctance to attend events and the turnover of researchers and committee members. He stated that RSAs need to be flexible to respond to researchers changing agendas in to provide a valuable means of support and that there is no substitute for dedicated committee members!

David Proctor then presented an excellent example of how to run an association from his extensive experiences as co-chair of the Life Sciences Postdoc Association at the University of Dundee. David firmly believes that the key to engaging researchers is to provide what they want and for the association to be viewed as useful. To this end the Life Sciences Postdoc Association has produced a handbook for new researchers that have recently moved to Dundee. This is primarily focused on researchers arriving from overseas covering topics such as how to get a bank account and finding accommodation and but is also relevant for UK researchers who have just moved to the city.

David outlined that the Life Sciences Postdoc Association provides a number of social activities aimed at providing networking opportunities for researchers and these include an annual ceilidh jointly run with the graduate students, a summer BBQ and pub quizzes throughout the year. David was keen to point out that associations need to cater for a wide range of researchers including those with family commitments.

The other key element of supporting researchers is assisting with their career development. The association has built a strong partnership with BioDundee which helps to provide external speakers to highlight career options outside of academia. David also pointed out that the more people on the committee the easier it is to organise events and the easier it is to keep the association running. The Dundee association committee currently consists of 15 researchers. Currently the budget is an impressive £7000, which is solely funded by the School of Biological Sciences and is non-competitive, although the association does have to prepare a proposed budget for the year ahead for approval from the Head of School.

Jo Rees presented her experiences from being the vice president and social officer for PdOC (Postdocs of Cambridge). PdOC was started by obtaining funds via sponsorship from science companies. This money enabled them to hold monthly meetings and reasonable researcher attendance at these provided an impetuous for the department to provide additional funding. PdOC currently hold 2 general meetings a year in order to obtain the views of researchers on the association and ensure they are still organising events which are relevant to the researcher community at Cambridge. PdOC main aim is to provide a communication point for all of the postdocs at University of Cambridge as prior to the setup of the association there was no representation for research staff within the University

Jo highlighted that for an association to be successful it is essential that the committee are enthusiastic and proactive as this will encourage researchers to attend meetings and take part in the association. Other tips she offered was ensure your association has a web presence, try to obtain official representation for researchers at School or College level to provide a relevance for the association and approach all potential sources of funding, no matter how diverse!

Sheila Thompson, Head of the Researcher Development Programme at the University of Edinburgh provided an excellent example of how Universities can help research staff associations. Sheila provides a point of contact for existing and starting-up associations and maintains a directory of existing RSAs containing contact details for the main committee members of each association.  She maintains a University wide email contact list for all research staff at Edinburgh and this is freely available to any RSA that wishes to identify researchers in their school or building.

Much of her work with RSAs is in the setup phase. Sheila described how she has worked with Head of Schools and Departments to get their endorsement for new associations and to help with obtaining funding.  She is happy to help with composing the remit of new associations and has presented at a number of association launch events.

Sheila also works across the entire University and sits on a number of committees representing research staff. In these she is able to highlight the achievements of RSAs and raise awareness of their importance and this also allows her to promote more communication between Schools and Departments on Research Staff issues. Sheila concluded by outlining her direct work with associations, which included publishing details of events through the Researcher Development programme website and newsletters and hosting networking events for associations across the University.

A constructive discussion session followed the four presentations and again this was mainly focused on examples from existing associations to assist with those in the room who wished to setup an RSA or those running RSAs. The main outcomes of the discussion were:

• Contact your University Researcher Development Officer as they will be able to offer some of the support for your RSA that was outlined by Sheila.
• There is a concern that funding in a ‘post-Roberts’ world will be more difficult to maintain, especially in Universities that have yet to fully support RSAs
• It is essential for an RSA to record details of the events that have been organised and how successful they have been. This allows identification of popular topics with researchers and is useful in future funding applications.
• It is essential that an RSA is addressing the needs of the researchers that they are representing or its value is lost.
• It is often worth ‘going above’ PI’s for support for RSAs to a School or College level. Typically, Heads of School or College are more aware of the benefits of good management of Research Staff than (some) PI’s!

Hopefully this will be of some help for those of you running RSAs or those thinking of starting one up. I certainly learned a few tips that I will try to incorporate into the RSA I’m involved with and I hope those that were there and those reading this blog will do too. In addition, the Life Sciences Postdoc Association at the University of Dundee have produced an excellent top 10 tips page for setting up an RSA and it is well worth a read (http://postdoc.lifesci.dundee.ac.uk/runningapostdoc/top_ten_tips.html) as I’m sure will be the UKRSA Guide to Research Staff Associations when it is published on the 30^th November.

I thought it was about time I told you a bit more about the Early Career Researcher Award winners for 2010. As you may know, the Vitae NW Hub ran a joint event on 6 July with the Manchester Beacon for Public Engagement. Take a look at www.vitae.ac.uk/engagingresearcher for more info about the event including lots of downloads and audio resources. The video from the day is coming soon so watch this space.

Anyway, at ‘The engaging researcher’ event, we launched two things:

1.    The Vitae engaging researcher booklet (www.vitae.ac.uk/researcherbooklets). You can download an electronic copy of this booklet from the website or just contact us for a hard copy. 

2.    The ECR Awards 2010

The idea of the awards was that it gave early career researchers based in the North West the opportunity to partner up with a public engagement organisation to deliver some activities over the summer/autumn. 5 projects were funded by the Manchester Beacon in the awards, all of which look really exciting. Take a look at the wide range of activities they are using to get the public involved in their research.…

• All my worldly possessions: The Guernsey Evacuee Experience

Gill Mawson (University of Manchester) is researching the Guernsey to Bury evacuee experience during World War Two. For her ECR award, she is working with Joanne Fitton from the Bury Archives Service to bring the Guernsey evacuee story to communities, creating sustainable links to her continuing research with activities and materials aimed at children and adults. Gill and Joanne are putting together a CD and booklet of stories, holding a family event at Ramsbottom Library and training museum visitor assistants on the evacuee experience.

• So how green are you?  Looking at how you consume energy in your home

Qi (aka Frank) Liu  is working with Nigel Linge (both University of Salford) to develop an exhibit for the Manchester Science Festival. They are exploring how to use modern communications technology to monitor the use of electricity and gas in the home in such a way as to persuade people to reduce consumption and hence, reduce their carbon footprint. The reaction to their newly developed interfaces will input into their research, as well as allowing the public to see how University research is relevant to modern day living. A video of the exhibit will be published on YouTube and will be rolled out to other suitable events in the future.

• Bio-Fiction Commissions

Sarah Fox (University of Manchester) is one of 3 researchers who will act as scientific consultants on three semi-fictional short stories  that re-imagine and re-create key moments in 20th century science. Sarah, working with Ra Page from Comma Press, will help a literary author tell a story based on eureka moments from her field. Sarah will inform the science content of the story and write a short afterword to the finished story that expands on the science and puts it in the wider context of her own research. The finished stories will be read and discussed at a public event at the recently opened Anthony Burgess Centre, Manchester. The readings and texts will be made available online on Comma's website as free downloads for six months after the event.

• PAGER - Public EngAGement and Education for Effective Research

Kim Linton (University of Manchester) is working with John Radford from the Manchester Academic Health Science Centre (MAHSC) to inform and engage the public about clinical research. At the moment, the majority of patients are not aware that relevant clinical trial options exist, or are reluctant to participate due to misconceptions about the nature of clinical research. Through a series of seminars, Kim hopes to dispel the myths about clinical trials and empower patients, enabling them to access research options whenever treatment is needed. A podcast and printed materials will also be available after the seminars.

• The Corrosion Summer Ball

Alice Laferrere and James Smith (both University of Manchester) are corrosion researchers. Together with Marieke Navin from the Museum of Science and Industry, they have come up with a classic love story between Mr Copper and Miss Sulphate. This story, to be showcased at the museum’s ‘Meet the…’ series, is designed to inspire the general public with an introduction to corrosion by offering them the chance to build, play and experiment with this exciting and complex discipline.

Congratulations to this year’s award winners – Gill, Frank, Sarah, Kim, Alice and James!

I hope this post has given you the spark of inspiration you need to go out there and get engaging. I will keep you informed about the progress of these projects and if you fancy seeing how they went for yourself, keep lunchtime on 10 November free in your diary as they will be showcased as part of the Manchester Beacon Summit week.

In the meantime I am going to continue working on CSR Brokerage, Social Development Mechanism and Social Credits business plan. The future’s bright, the future is Social Credits.

Over 60 researchers from 10 North West universities attended the event, including postgraduate researchers, research staff, supervisors and Principal Investigators. The participants came from a diverse range of research fields, from Analytical Science to Visual Arts so the event gave them the rare opportunity to network and socialise with researchers they would not normally meet. We hope this will stimulate interdisciplinary collaboration as well as a sense of community with those in the region interested in public engagement.

There was also a broad range of previous experience in the audience from those who had not done any public engagement to some who had engaged with lots of different age groups and communities using activities such as festivals, school visits, broadcasting, public dialogue and co-inquiry.

As you can imagine, this gave us quite a task in designing a day that would be useful for all of the participants no matter what their experience or field was!

I’m not going to talk about the structure of the day so if you are interested the full programme content can be found at www.vitae.ac.uk/engagingresearcher. What we wanted to achieve from the programme was some inspiration, hopefully provided by good keynote speakers and experienced public engagement practitioners, some short workshops to provide lots of ‘input’ and longer workshops which split participants by experience that allowed them to explore what public engagement meant and how they could formulate a personal action plan.

We also provided a public engagement ‘opportunities zone’ over the networking lunch to give researchers access to some experienced public engagement organisations with which they might be able to work in the future. The Manchester Beacon has launched their Early Career Researcher Awards 2010 which will help fund such partnerships (for more info, see www.vitae.ac.uk/engagingresearcher).

We have started to collate some post event resources on www.vitae.ac.uk/engagingresearcher including a record of the Twitter conversation around the event and handouts from the sessions to help those who did not attend to still access some of the information. Soon to be added to the website is audio and video clips of the speakers and facilitators and photos from the day. We are currently collating feedback from participants but initial responses have been extremely positive.

Where to next then? Well, we are hosting a ‘reunion’ networking lunch in November where we will also showcase the successful applicants to the Early Career Researcher Awards 2010. If you are interested in this or want to know more about our event, just drop me a line at .

Any thoughts or comments about this post (which turned out to be much longer than I initially thought I could write for!) are most welcome or maybe you attended the event and would like to share your experience below.

(this post will also appear on my blog http://vitaenwhub.posterous.com/)

Why do you think public engagement is important?

This follows on nicely from What does public engagement mean to you? As always, we would love to hear your thoughts on this. Answers so far include:

• To try and give a public appreciation for research and its applications
• Without science communication, talented students may pass science and engineering because it is perceived to be tedious or full or boring maths. The reality is very different; science and engineering is exhilarating, innovative and essential.
• It’s one of the most rewarding aspects of my (academic) job.

What are the top things you need to be effective at public engagement?

Answers so far:

• Interactive and fun
• Good listening skills
• Good communication skills
• Flexibility
• Enthusiasm!
• Motivation - you have to really want to be involved and know why you want to.
• Planning and practice
• Always be aware of your audience
• Know what you are trying to achieve

Got any to add? Please do so below. Alternatively, if you don't have a Vitae login and you do not want to register at the moment, add your comments to the Vitae NW Hub blog.

What resources could help support your public engagement work?

• Time on an already over 100% workload allocation
• Organised networks, groups, events for more opportunities
• Recognition of it's importance vs REF/RAE, teaching etc.
• Funding opportunities; many of them are lead by specific funding councils or professional bodies so you aren't always eligible.
• Knowledge – who is doing what?
• Support from senior management and recognition (possibly in promotion criteria)
• Careers information eg. case stories, alumni involvement, stories, spectrum of possibilities arising from science-related subjects
• Contacts and opportunities
• Can there be such a thing as outreach “fellows” to help co-ordinate and give momentum
• More co-ordinated / structured approaches
• Not so much 'training' but opportunity to put your PE into practice and get feedback.
• Meeting others who are doing this too and learning from them.
• Knowing where to start.

This is one to feed back to the funders and individual institutions so if you have any thoughts, we would really like to hear them.

What advice could you give to people who are new to public engagement?

Answers so far:

• Be confident that you have the knowledge to share • Keep the expected outcomes simple and don’t overestimate the level of knowledge.
• Be willing to interact with the audience at the appropriate level. 
• Be amusing and entertaining. Above all be enthusiastic and make it show!
• Get buy-in from your manager/supervisor.
• Get some training and get some practice.
• Find out who is involved in your School, talk to them and ask to observe what goes on before taking part yourself. Try to find an activity that suits your particular skill.
• Firstly have the enthusiasm to reach out to the general public, secondly find fun and easy ways in which the public can connect with science, and thirdly make the most of the available resources and contacts out there!
• Some researchers seem to want to get involved mainly because they think outreach will give them extra CV points. This is probably true, but it should not be your main motivation.
• One way to know if you actually understand your research work is to talk to people who are not your colleagues, but the public (especially kids). You have two minutes to grab their interest and attention.
• Do it! Time spent thinking about how to explain what you do, and why you do it, to different audiences is never wasted. And these sorts of activities can be rewarding and provide opportunities, ideas and inspiration in many different – sometimes unexpected ways!

Please add your own thoughts and advice below...

Public Engagement and Impact of Research
Natural History Museum, 23 March 2010

The event began with lunch followed by a welcome from Fiona Denney who thanked the Natural History Museum for hosting the afternoon and handed over to Eileen Cox, Head of Postgraduate Studies at the Museum.  She informed the audience that 80-90 postgraduate researchers were associated with the Museum in some way as well as approximately 30 postdoctoral researchers.

The first speaker, Steve Cross (Head of Public Engagement, University College London (UCL)) explained that the Beacons are a four year initiative until July 2011 and are funded by HEFCE, the Research Councils and the Wellcome Trust.  There are 5 other Beacons across the UK and the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) has been established in Bristol.

He started his presentation with varying definitions of Public Engagement (PE), explaining that Public Engagement is all about communication and involves bringing universities and the public together, encouraging a culture of two way conversation which generates mutual benefit. He felt the NCCPE definition (which follows) would probably become the definitive explanation for this.

“Public engagement brings universities and the public together, and generates mutual benefit: inspiring, enriching and empowering everyone who gets involved.  Managed effectively, it makes universities more welcoming and accessible, and increases their relevance and impact on society”

PE is not something that could be tacked on because it has to be done.  For this to work for researchers it has to be something that results in mutual benefit.

Different levels of engagement with PE range from the very basic telling public groups about research, right the way through to creating knowledge in collaboration with communities and interest groups outside the University. To leave behind the basic one sided model of engagement and to reach the more mutually beneficial levels of PE involves a complete change of culture within universities and the Beacons are attempting to bring this about.

They are not involved in putting on big events   but as well as culture change are involved in capacity building by getting those not involved already to be involved, and by helping those who are involved already to become more engaged.  They aim to embed PE at strategic level, to create networks and join up people doing PE and also to look at what works and what doesn’t through sharing experience and evaluation.  They are able to remove barriers to those who work with PE with strategic funding and training, by generating projects and by working with management to get rid of any residual culture and also by building rewards and recognition for public engagement.  He pointed out that at UCL public engagement activity was now taken into account for promotion.  He also described “BrightClub” a project at UCL which encouraged researchers to write and perform stand-up comedy about their research.

With regard to why researchers should be involved in PE, the enjoyment factor plays a big part on the personal side as well as the development of a new skill.  There is a moral case for those in receipt of public funds to give something back by showing their research to be publicly relevant.  On the academic side it allows researchers to think of new questions and new angles for their research.

Each university has a different culture and one size doesn’t fit all.  Change is slow and could take at least 10 years, but there is a strong business case for universities to be involved in public engagement and there is enthusiasm at all levels.

Visit http:www.ucl.ac.uk/public-engagement  or http://www.brightclub.org  to find out more of what goes on at UCL

Mark Miodownik from King’s College London spoke of his experiences in public engagement and how he had always wanted to be involved as well as how much he enjoyed that involvement.  The Materials Library that he set up involves much more than just science, since use of materials cuts right across all disciplines including the Arts.  As well as himself, the Materials Library staff includes the Curator, Zoe Laughlin, who is an arts graduate and Martin Conreen, who is a designer.  They put on events on different topics in interesting venues such as museums and galleries which attract a wide variety of people from all sorts of backgrounds and with different interests.  He showed some films from two of these events, one on flesh held at the Wellcome Collection and one on ceramics held at the V&A. The Library now has some funding to do this internally.

PE and knowledge exchange interface with all aspects of his job.  He described how someone would approach the Library to find a material that could be suitable for a particular use and that needed some specific properties.  If the exact match was not available then this could produce a research project and even lead to funding.

To find out more about the Materials Library visit http://www.materialslibrary.org.uk 

Stephen Roberts from the Natural History Museum spoke about Nature Live who are a small part of the PE group at the Museum.  They act as an interface between researchers and the public and put on some 500 events a year for lots of different types of audiences to explore, discover and discuss the natural world, with over 130 research staff taking part. A link to a live event taking place in the Attenborough studios at the Museum was broadcast as an example.  Science Communicators facilitate these events and make them enjoyable. Stephen introduced Aoife Glass who explained her role as a science communicator and Nick Higgs a PhD student who was involved with the events as a researcher.  As a direct result of this PE work Nick had been contacted by someone working in a different field with whom he is now involved in a research collaboration.

The Director of Science for the Museum, Richard Lane, also highlighted that having dialogue with the public was useful for scientific staff in getting them to articulate what they do and to see that their research is relevant.  He also spoke about the different ways they could engage with the public, for example writing content for the museum website or developing content for exhibits.  Interaction is beneficial to their own survival and the science communicators are able to act as an interface to enable them to do this effectively.

Eileen Cox spoke of other Museum activities including as the new Darwin Centre and its state of the art interactive exhibits.

After the tea break Graeme Rosenberg from HEFCE spoke of impact and the Research Excellence Framework (REF).  He pointed out that there had been substantial increases in public funding for research in the past ten years and this period may come to be seen as the golden age for HEI funding. The UK Research base was second only to the US in international success, with high quality research and output.  Assessing impact enables benefits to be demonstrated and strengthens any case for future investment.

The previous RAE had been criticised for focussing on academic research achievement but the new REF will include other things in order to produce a level playing field.

The REF consultation has produced proposals to assess impact through expert review and a pilot study is now underway using the case study method.

There was broad support for ‘historical’ impact, subject to the development of a robust method and weighting.  Objections reflected concerns about ‘predicting’ impact.

There would be continued dialogue and decisions on weighting and method for impact would be after the conclusion of the pilot (Autumn 2010)

With regard to types of impact there would be a wide definition and the parameters for assessing impact would include only impacts that have occurred during the REF period, underpinned by research over a longer timeframe.  Impact of the unit as a whole would be measured not every output for every researcher, just the best exemplars.  Research of all types would be included.  Assessment would be through expert review within panel with case studies including narrative backed up by some indicators.  Each subject area panel would develop indicators as appropriate to that discipline, and would include input from external audiences, users and beneficiaries of research as well as from academics.  It was intended that there would be the minimum burden necessary to enable robust assessment.

The current pilot exercise involved 29 UK HEIs measuring impact during 2005-09, underpinned by research since 1993 and the panels were:

¨       Medicine
¨       Physics
¨       earth systems and environmental science
¨       social work and social policy
¨       english language and literature

Each submission would include an overview statement, one case study per 10 research staff

The panels would look at three questions

¨       what are the social or economic benefits?
¨       What ‘underpinning’ research was done and how did it contribute to the benefit?
¨       What evidence is there to support the above?

There would be a common template of 1500 words and examples and feedback from the pilot exercise would be published.  There would be no differentiation between local/national/international impact etc. as this did not depend on territory.

Graeme also gave details of the make up of pilot panel membership.  Details of panel members will be published.

The website  http:/www.hefce.ac.uk/ref gives guidance for pilot institutions on how to make a submission and further information would be announced later in the year.

Michael Metelits, Director of Business Development from Goldsmiths, University of London also spoke on impact.  He was pleased to see from the previous speaker that there was a shift in the way in which impact would be looked at, producing a level playing field and was happy that ‘narrative’ had been moved up the scale.  He felt that the research process or practice base as well as the outcome creates an impact and interaction between people was equally as important as what comes out of the interaction. Viewing impact as separate from the project doesn’t work for practice based research.  A demonstrable effect that transforms projects and also the researcher is the only way to account for interdisciplinary approach.  Basic investigative/curiosity-driven research is incredibly important as well as problem based industrial research.

With regard to composition of the panels he suggested PE professionals would make a good addition.

With enormous pressure on public funding public engagement becomes more important to account for research to non-specialists and impact has to be taken seriously, because showing benefits can sell intangibles.

Points from the panel discussion and question session, which followed the presentations, included:

¨       There did appear sometimes to be a difference in appetite for PE but capacity building i.e. finding interested people and working to demonstrate success does then raise interest in colleagues.
¨       When researchers say “no one is interested in my area” looking at drawing up an impact plan can show a variety of possible interested audiences and give a PE window.
¨       Getting students at an early enough stage to learn how to present at the level of their audience would help.
¨       So many undergraduates are not passionate and modules on public presentation at this stage would increase efficiency later.
¨       The age where supervisors stop PE is gradually coming to an end because of increased pressure to engage with the public coming from multiple directions.
¨       PE is not separate in art and design and is fundamental to its agendas

¨       An intervention by a science communicator is not an imposition but is intended to help researchers articulate to external people who are going to judge what they are doing and helps researchers to tell their own stories, rather than taking their stories away to be retold
¨       Communicating between disciplines helps to learn about each other
¨       Newer Universities tend to be more engaged with communities than older universities
¨       Universities still tend to see the PE field as “how to deal with the press”

The event closed with a networking drinks reception

Vitae would like to thank the author for contributing this article. Vitae would like to remind readers that the information and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Vitae or CRAC: The career development organisation.

This article has been published as part of Vitae's Public engagement online activity in July 2010.  To view other articles on this theme please visit www.vitae.ac.uk/publicengagement

Todays question is 'what does public engagement mean to you?'

Answers so far:

• People working with people.

• Sharing knowledge.

• Communicating information effectively.

• 2-way discussion and collaboration - exchange something dynamic.

• Making science interesting and accessible to a wide range of audiences.

• Bringing scientists out of the lab and into the public domain.

• Getting people outside of your normal circle interested and excited about research.

• Anything that develops a better understanding of the (research) work we do.

• Making connections between different communities.

• I like to communicate the scientific process and share the wonders / awe / amazement / joy of the Universe with people.

• It's about interacting with others.

Please add your thoughts below.

As part of a recent project on family resemblances, we organised an exhibition at a local community arts centre. We ran a photo competition about family likenesses and displayed the winning entries, we worked with a local artist to produce new exhibition materials and we wrote about the main project findings in Plain English. As the project was funded as part of the ESRC's National Centre for Research Methods, we even had a methodology section where we explained in jargon-free terms what data we collected and why we did it that way, as well as giving visitors a chance to have a go at some of the methods themselves. It certainly wasn't easy, but it was definitely rewarding. 

We produced a toolkit about organising exhibitions about research with lots of practical suggestions based on our experiences. And we also have a short video of Katherine Davies, the project researcher, talking about public engagement activity throughout the project, including the exhibition. 

If you are – Nowgen is keen to hear from you. There are small grants available to help you develop a new public engagement project. You could use the grant to support a new workshop, resource or interactive demo. There’s lots of freedom, but the key thing is to think of an idea that helps the public engage with your research. These grants are available to create partnerships between researchers and public engagement teams and we are interested in working with you.

Nowgen is a specialist team with many years of experience running public engagement, education and patient involvement projects. For more information see: www.nowgen.org.uk. We are part of the Manchester NIHR Biomedical Research Centre and we are interested in working with researchers from all biomedical disciplines.

The deadline for these awards is very soon, so please get in touch ASAP if you’re interested in this opportunity.

Please contact: kate.dack@manchester.ac.uk or call 276 8943.

Kate Dack – Public Programmes Manager.

Universities are changing. They are increasingly diversifying the types of teaching and learning they provide and the students they enrol. The change has been driven largely by external pressures, from funders, from government and from the many ‘customers’ of universities which include the students, their families and future employers, the users and benefactors of research and scholarship in universities and not least the tax payer.  Now is hardly a time of economic plenty for universities, so investment of time and money in activities such as public engagement needs clear justification and some measurable
outputs. The carrots and sticks wielded by the core funders of universities are powerful incentives. The forthcoming Research Excellence Framework is likely to place considerable weight on the wider ‘impact’ of research.

This has caused much concern in academe and fears that the UK will no longer maintain its position amongst the very best places in the world to undertake fundamental ‘blue skies’ research. This would be a disaster, but it isn’t necessarily the outcome. If, as many of us would argue, ‘blue skies’ research has had great impact and benefit, then dissemination of its findings and clarity over that impact should be valued. Arguments over the details of
measuring impact and the time scale that is needed (many decades in some cases) will run on, but there is little disagreement that universities need to get better at explaining what they do, how and why, and why it should matter to the UK. 

These arguments assume that public engagement is a rather defensive tactic to ensure that universities are valued and supported. But those with long experience of public engagement activities would argue that there are much wider benefits. There is nothing like trying to discuss a complicated piece of research with non-experts to make you really grapple with its true meaning or see it in a different light as I, myself, have discovered engaging with patient groups. Sometimes the most relevant questions and answers come from the ‘lay’ audience.  There are also personal rewards and enjoyment in public engagement activity. This year’s winner of the Society of Biology Young Science Communicator Award, Ceri Harrup, said that she was considering giving up plans for a career in research until she became involved in public engagement. The excitement and challenge of explaining her work (on mucous, so not the most engaging topic) to non-scientists made her realise the fascination of her research.

The benefits of public engagement to a university, its staff and students and wider communities are numerous, and need to be recognised, rewarded and valued by those in leadership positions. We are discovering a huge appetite for engagement inside and outside our universities as part of the Beacons initiative and, whilst public engagement activities may be a modest part of the time of a busy academic or university student, it shouldn’t have to be restricted to weekends and evenings and can be celebrated by those in the most senior positions throughout universities.

Vitae would like to thank the author for contributing this article. Vitae would like to remind readers that the information and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Vitae or CRAC: The career development organisation.

This article has been published as part of Vitae's Public engagement online activity in July 2010.  To view other articles on this theme please visit www.vitae.ac.uk/publicengagement

Recently a research project run by the LSE – ScoPE, or ‘Scientists on Public Engagement’ – reported on three years of interviews on professional scientists’ attitudes to public engagement and communication. What the authors found scientists depicted was a kind of love story: science and the public belong together, forever. When the relationship is working, everyone benefits, with the offspring of the union everything from better science to a more informed populace. But too often – the story goes – interlopers break into and distort what should be blissful togetherness. The media, lobbyists or corporations variously fall into the role of gay deceiver, seducing one party or another and causing heartbreak and alienation all round.

The ScoPE project was innovative in that it talked directly to scientists who’d been involved in public engagement, rather than observing from the sidelines. But the story the research found is a familiar one. Over the last 25 years public engagement with research has become both increasingly common and – for those within universities – increasingly incentivised, and driving this has been the sense that bringing research and its publics together can only be a good thing – that it is indeed a match made in heaven.

I can safely leave it to others to argue why this is the case: there are a myriad of reasons, perhaps not least of which is that everyone involved tends to have a very good time. What I’d like to tell is a slightly different story, one which presents a rather British history of getting things wrong and then getting things (slightly) better and which helps to explain why the UK is commonly regarded as a world leader in public engagement activities. If the story experts tell about their relationship with society is a romance, this is a history play – with the ending still unclear.

In the manner of histories of policy, this story is punctuated by reports, with a 1985 report – ‘The Public Understanding of Science’ – from a Royal Society committee marking its beginning. What became known as the Bodmer Report (for the committee chair, Sir Walter Bodmer) argued that the general public really didn’t know much about science and that this was, in short, a jolly bad thing. The Bodmer Report instigated a wave of interest in and funding for ‘PUS’ activities, from public lectures and media training to research on public knowledge of particular scientific facts. The key feature of this wave – Act 1 in the history, if you like –  was an emphasis on information and education. If only more people knew whether hot air rises or sinks, or how fast light travels, the feeling was, the UK would rub along much more smoothly.

Act 2 (and the 1990s) brings social science to the forefront, with work from ‘critical PUS’ researchers pointing out that to know science is not, in fact, necessarily to love it. To return to the love story metaphor, this research indicated that – while the whole world might love a lover – no-one likes a bore, particularly not a prospective beau: the PUS approach took no account of the reasons public groups did or did not know or care about particular bits of scientific information, the fact that laypeople have their own sources of knowledge, and the specificities of interactions between institutionalised science and lay publics. At the same time, the UK was experiencing a wave of public relations disasters around science and technology – BSE-vCJD, Foot and Mouth, GM crops – which had highlighted all too clearly that telling the public that everything would be fine while desperately crossing your fingers that this would indeed be the case was not an effective long-term strategy. It was time, it seemed, to take a different approach, and the work of critical PUS authors suggested that ‘dialogue’ – rather than one-way communication – was the way forward.

And so to 2000, and the House of Lords Third Report on Science and Society. This argued that a “crisis of trust” had given rise to a “new mood for dialogue”; even more strongly, it suggested that direct dialogue with the public should move from being an optional add-on to science-based policy making and to the activities of research organisations and learned institutions, and should become a normal and integral part of the process.

In other words, research councils, funding bodies and universities should take into account the views of lay publics as they make policy and distribute money. It is hard to over-estimate – or indeed even summarise – the ramifications of this move. The Science and Society report effectively inaugurated an era of dialogue, participation and public engagement; one which has, over the last decade, moved from having a sole focus on science to involving university research of all stripes. Act 3, then, is a carnival, in which almost anything goes: community-based action research, art-science engagement events, direct public input into research prioritisation, the use of new media. Many of these activities have won international acclaim. In terms of the UK’s bumpy history of the research-society relationship, it seems that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Act 3 is, I would suggest, still in progress. It’s unclear whether the story will end in a happy-ever-after – or indeed exactly how the children will turn out. If social science has frequently acted as matchmaker in the past, a new range of actors – from the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement to consultancies such as Dialogue by Design – are taking on the role of anxious midwife in exploring what the most productive outcomes of public engagement should be. Better research? More supportive university-community relationships? A fun night out? Part of the excitement of being here, in 2010, is that all these are possibilities – and that what public engagement is and should be remains up for grabs.

Vitae would like to thank the author for contributing this article. Vitae would like to remind readers that the information and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Vitae or CRAC: The career development organisation.

This article has been published as part of Vitae's Public engagement online activity in July 2010.  To view other articles on this theme please visit www.vitae.ac.uk/publicengagement

As I hunt through job advertisements with researchers, one thing comes up again and again: communication skills. In today’s working environment, there aren’t many opportunities to work in isolation, so most employers are looking for individuals who can communicate well with a range of people, whether its customers, colleagues from different backgrounds, or senior management. If you can add to that the ability to write clearly and deliver a good presentation, you’re a long way to offering an attractive package to any future employer.

So, how do you go about developing and practising these all-important communication skills? One answer is public engagement activities. There are many reasons why researchers choose to get involved with public engagement. Some feel a responsibility to communicate the results of their work, and to help the public, often the paymaster, understand its importance. Others are passionate about improving the public perception of, for example, science and scientists, and encouraging more young people to study these subjects. But whatever the reason, there is no denying it’s a benefit for your career development.

From CV points to new directions

In many HEIs it’s difficult not to get involved with some kind of public engagement activity, and that’s beauty of it. In recent years, public outreach has become increasingly popular, and many institutions lay on ready-made activities at public festivals, school visits and open days. It’s perfectly possible to turn up with minimal preparation, offer an hour or two of your time, and in exchange gain valuable experience communicating with all sorts of people – from enthusiastic tots who want hands-on fun, to bored teenagers, to the super-keen parents who think they remember a bit of science themselves from years ago. And if you can keep them all successfully entertained, you’ve got a great tale to recall in interview when you’re challenged with ‘tell me about a time you’ve used your communication skills’.

For those who are keen to get more involved, there are plenty of opportunities to develop demonstrations and activities based on your own research. The experience is an ideal way to demonstrate real creativity in communication – another thing that will impress potential employers. And to add to the buzz of activity going on in HEIs, there are plenty of national schemes that you can join, some of which offer perks such as formal media training, and may be well recognised by employers.

But what if the thought of standing up in front of an audience isn’t your thing? If you’re still keen to communicate your research more widely, don’t neglect opportunities to write for the student press or other publications within your institution, such as research magazines or alumni newsletters. Editors are often crying out for material, and it can be a useful way to raise your own profile in an institution. The downside is that you’ll probably receive less support or training for this kind of activity, but if you can do it well, you’ll have a skill much in demand and which fewer people can demonstrate.

If you find you really enjoy outreach and have a talent for communicating your research, it might be something you want to consider a career in. Careers in publishing, journalism, PR, policy-making, even running outreach schemes, are popular and viable alternatives to the traditional academic route. It’s a way to use the knowledge and skills you’ve gained in your research, and perhaps keep in touch with your field in a broader sense. But these are competitive sectors with no one established route in, which is why the key to success is experience and contacts: things which public engagement activity offers you in spades. Sheena Elliott, who did her PhD in physics, is one of these success stories. ‘The outreach and other voluntary communications work I did while studying for my PhD was one of the things that convinced me I’d like a career in science communication. The experience I gained opened the door to a position in media relations at the Royal Society of Chemistry, and I’m now the Communications Manager for Science, Education and Industry there’, she says.

But I want to be an academic

Employers want good communicators, experience is essential for careers in communication, but what, I hear you ask, is the point of all this if I want to stay in academia? Surely my time would be better spent working on getting out more publications? It’s true that for academic career paths, it’s most important that you have a good research track record, but public engagement experience is not without its benefits, as Prof. Val Gibson of Cambridge University asserts: ‘The ability to engage with sponsors, decision makers, school children and the general public is a key aspect of an academic's life. If you are unable to explain your research in an accessible manner, it becomes more difficult to secure funding and enthuse the next generation to join your quest for new discoveries.’ And when it comes to securing a permanent academic position, public engagement activity shows that you have the potential to teach, to design lectures and practical classes (for example, if you’ve been involved with designing your own activity), and that you’re the kind of person who takes their academic responsibilities seriously and gets involved with the life of a department. ‘It is always a positive bonus to hear that a prospective academic has actively contributed to or led outreach activities at a reasonable level within their research groups’, adds Prof. Gibson.

So whichever career path you eventually hope to take, it’s clear that getting involved with some kind of public engagement will look good on your CV, as well as being great fun, and easy to get involved with. What are you waiting for...?

Vitae would like to thank the author for contributing this article. Vitae would like to remind readers that the information and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Vitae or CRAC: The career development organisation.

Can you explain your work in 20 minutes to an audience of your peers?  Of course you can! You do it at conferences and seminars all the time.  How about explaining it in 2 minutes to a 10-year-old? Or writing 1000 words on it for teenagers?  There's a sense in which researchers do public engagement whenever we answer the question "So what do you do?" with more than just "I'm a researcher". You're explaining your work to someone outside of your field, and you're engaging with that great mass of people who aren't doing research in your area. There are many opportunities for greater engagement, with a wide range of people, and in this article I will try to highlight the advantages of engagement from the perspective of a postdoc.

My first official public engagement opportunity came in 2004 when I was a finalist in the British Science Association's "Perspectives" competition. This is a poster contest for UK postgrads and postdocs, and the finalists get to go to the British Science Festival to present a poster on the ethical implications of their work. The British Science Festival is one of the largest science festivals in Europe and attracts huge interest from media, schools, and the general public. After several excellently organised training sessions on research ethics, poster design and science communication, about 20 of us arrived in Exeter with our posters, eager to meet the public. People seemed to arrive in waves, as other talks ended and coach parties arrived, but for the whole time we were in the session we were on our feet and talking.

Things I learned from this experience? Explaining my work to a coach party of 13 year olds is difficult but far from impossible; 3-4 hour poster sessions are exhausting; You get better at explaining things with practice; Poster design is a lot more complicated than you might think; and ... If you've got to do poster sessions several days in a row, don't forget the Strepsils. I found it an immensely rewarding experience, which improved my communication skills considerably.  Other benefits included the opportunity to meet and talk with other PhD students and postdocs from a huge range of subjects from across the UK, and, of course, the opportunity to attend the British Science Festival and see some remarkable science communicators at work (including Robert Winston!).

I'd thoroughly recommend this to any early career researchers or PhD students. I think there's nothing as good as explaining your work to a curious schoolgirl for honing your science communication skills. You can find out more here: http://www.britishscienceassociation.org/web/scienceinsociety/perspectives/

Most disciplines seem to have organisations devoted to professional development or outreach (e.g., the Institute of Physics, the Institute of Engineering and Technology, the British Computer Society, the Royal Society...), and these tend to have events aimed at supporting or promoting the discipline. For example, the British Computer Society has local branch meetings all over the UK, and specialist groups for niche interests. All of these meetings need speakers, and if you're interested in talking about your work to the broader professional community they can be real opportunities. As they are attended by professionals, you can assume a broad understanding of the foundations of your subject but no specialist knowledge; this makes pitching a talk difficult but the comments and questions can be very rewarding. Getting a business perspective or a legal perspective on your own work can be a real eye-opener. 

Another way to engage with The Public through giving a talk is via the network of Cafe Scientifiques. These are groups that meet in bars or cafes and invite scientists to talk to the general public about their work; the one I go to sometimes gets over a hundred people in.  I've not yet volunteered to talk, but it's something I plan to do soon.  You can find out more about them here:

http://www.cafescientifique.org/

Public engagement doesn't have to actually involve meeting the public.  Another way to get involved is through writing; either for general interest magazines or for publications aimed at school-level students (these seem to exist for many subjects). In my area the main schoolkid magazine in the UK is cs4fn (Computer Science for Fun) and they run a website http://www.cs4fn.org as well as sending paper copies of their magazine to schools. The aim of this publication is to demystify computing and computing research for 13-14 year olds. It's popular with teachers, and gets good feedback from students too, and the editors were very helpful when it came to working out ways to talk about my work that the readers would be able to understand.

So are there any pitfalls to this? Well it takes time, which is always at a premium. And whilst it looks good on the CV, if you have to make a choice between writing another journal paper and giving a public talk I suspect the bright thing to do career-wise is the journal paper! The questions you get from the public sometimes come from unexpected directions, too - whilst it is good to be able to handle varied and challenging questions, there's a limit. For me, that limit comes somewhere before the question an elderly gentleman asked me at the British Science Festival: "So, according to you, when are robots going to take over the earth? I think it'll be 2025." I expect that sometimes it's OK to be stuck for an answer...

Vitae would like to thank the author for contributing this article. Vitae would like to remind readers that the information and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Vitae or CRAC: The career development organisation.

This article has been published as part of Vitae's Public engagement online activity in July 2010.  To view other articles on this theme please visit www.vitae.ac.uk/publicengagement

See recent article in the guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jul/13/maths-busking-street-entertainers

Two years ago I was lucky enough to have a postdoc fellowship funded by the Non-Governmental Public Action research programme which I held at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. I say lucky, because from the perspective of public engagement, the programme was very supportive and provided quite generous funding for me to organise a exhibition of photographs related to my research on the Egyptian labour movement. 

In addition to the exhibition itself - which was hosted by SOAS students' union - I also organised a public panel discussion and film showing. The audience was an interesting mixture of academics, research students, trade union activists, journalists and the general public, and it helped me to make useful contacts in the media and in the trade union movement. 

I've been working in Cambridge over the past year at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities. Cambridge seems to have a particularly good record in promoting public engagement (at least to judge by the fact that I'm the third person based there to contribute to this discussion...). The CRASSH Postdoctoral Researcher Forum organised a day workshop entitled 'From Impact to Engagement' which explored the 'impact' of research in the widest sense (click on the link for some of the presentations and other resources). One of the highlights for me was hearing about the very inventive ways in which researchers in the Research Centre of English and Applied Linguistics were engaged with varied audiences. These included  a day of activities as part of the Festival of Ideas (highlights included a 'Can you beat our Scrabble champion' challenge), involvement with a residential course for Gifted and Talented school students, a programme developing resources for Linguistics in Schools and collaboration with the Bilingualism Matters charity. 

My understanding is that a lot of the work in organising public engagement events is done by individuals like Napoleon Katsos, but having some institutional resources and spaces to discuss what kind of activities to prioritise helps give these initiatives some shape and direction. Crucially, institutional support means that longer-term initiatives like RCEAL's Bilingualism Information Network are possible and can feed back into the centre's research.