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Come to Middle Earth for PCST 2018
For my sins, I am the Chair of the Local Organising Committee for the PCST (Public Communication of Science and Technology) Conference, 2018. This is the largest and most significant international meeting of science communicators and it occurs every two years. From 3 – 6 April, it shall be held in New Zealand for the first time, attracting over 500 of the world’s science communicators – a mixture of both researchers and practitioners – to our wee part of the globe, or Middle Earth as Sir Peter Jackson likes to call it. Science Communication is a relatively new field and these gatherings assume an importance not unlike the migrations of…
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Let’s Communicate Science with Football
Today I watched the magnificent Tom Brady lead the Patriots to a win in the American Football Conference Finals over the Jaguars and gain yet another berth in a Super Bowl. It was a remarkable game that the Jaguars could easily have won – probably should have won – were it not for the Tom Factor. Behind throughout, the Patriots went into the final quarter with only 10 points to the Jaguars’ 20. Yet two touchdown drives, directed by the unflappable Mr Brady, left the Patriots as eventual four-point winners. It is hard not to feel both awed and meagre when admiring the feats of Brady, in a similar way…
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Narrative and Video: untapped possibilities for science communication
The way we communicate or, rather, consume media has changed drastically in just the last few years. Online video on-demand is where things are at. However, even though consumption rates are through the roof, the amount of video available online is daunting. As is often the case for science communicators, it becomes a question of how to reach the target audience and get yourself seen/heard with all the competition for eyes and ears. Associate Professor Bienvenido León (University of Navarra in Spain) and I are part of a large international study looking at science videos on YouTube. We have analysed the narratives in over 800 videos and, on one level,…
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Grand Canyon
The Grand Canyon: natural wonder of the world. I’ve been there a few times now and the sight of it never fails to stop me. Stop me dead in my tracks, overcome by its immeasurable size and layered, many-coloured, beauty. It seems to me that I even stop breathing because there is simply no breath left for the expletives of awe and joy that fill me but, uncharacteristically, never leave my body. Previously, however, I had never walked down into the canyon, and it was this that was the object of my being there two weeks ago. To look at the Grand Canyon is not just to see the world’s…
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Time to Stand Up
Where to start? I’m 63. I have a title: the Stuart Professor of Science Communication. But what does it all mean? I started my professional life as a scientist, as wedded to the notion of a testable hypothesis as any human can be. Earlier, as a boy, I had been drawn to science by some of the 20th Century’s greatest popularisers of science: David Attenborough, Jacques Cousteau, Gerald Durrell, Desmond Morris, Carl Sagan and Rachel Carson. I’ve always appreciated the schism that exists between the doing and the telling. If in my head I was a scientist, in my heart I leant towards science communication. Now, I find myself as…
