Restor(y)ing academia: Oral storytelling skills for impact in research and teaching
12:00pm - 1:00pm /
Tuesday 30th May 2017
/ Venue: Room B.08b (Basement) Whelan Building
Type: Seminar /
Category: Department
- 01517955457
- Maria Guzman Castillo
- Suitable for: All
- Admission: Free
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In the corporate and charity world, a compelling narrative is known to spread ideas and bring in funding far better than facts and figures. Stories are memorable – research suggests they engage the brain, enhancing empathy, understanding and co-operation. These are the outcomes needed for research to have an impact in the world both in and outside our academic disciplines, in the community, and amongst our students.
But when was the last time you were at a presentation which really changed, in your very bones, how you understand the world? Too often our oral communications just don’t get the same attention we give to our written academic work. No academic would be allowed to publish something chaotically structured, longer than the word limit, contained incomplete sentences, or unexplained acronyms. Yet we endure the equivalent in oral form: unengaging presentations, talks, conferences and lectures. These are a missed opportunity to inspire people with the new knowledge we’ve uncovered and to connect to our audience personally.
Part of the problem is that we don’t really know how to connect: we aren’t taught how to use ourselves, our words and our bodies to enable an audience to imagine the things we know from our research, as if it were just as ‘real’ for them.
Dr Hannah McDowall is a researcher turned storyteller who has trained over 600 people to integrate storytelling into their oral communications. Hannah will be sharing her experience of using storytelling to communicate the complexity of our research findings and use it as a springboard to inspire colleagues, stakeholders, students and research funders to dig deeper into a research question.
We will hopefully have a lively conversation about how we can make our oral communications more interesting, personal, engaging, and real.
But when was the last time you were at a presentation which really changed, in your very bones, how you understand the world? Too often our oral communications just don’t get the same attention we give to our written academic work. No academic would be allowed to publish something chaotically structured, longer than the word limit, contained incomplete sentences, or unexplained acronyms. Yet we endure the equivalent in oral form: unengaging presentations, talks, conferences and lectures. These are a missed opportunity to inspire people with the new knowledge we’ve uncovered and to connect to our audience personally.
Part of the problem is that we don’t really know how to connect: we aren’t taught how to use ourselves, our words and our bodies to enable an audience to imagine the things we know from our research, as if it were just as ‘real’ for them.
Dr Hannah McDowall is a researcher turned storyteller who has trained over 600 people to integrate storytelling into their oral communications. Hannah will be sharing her experience of using storytelling to communicate the complexity of our research findings and use it as a springboard to inspire colleagues, stakeholders, students and research funders to dig deeper into a research question.
We will hopefully have a lively conversation about how we can make our oral communications more interesting, personal, engaging, and real.