BU Research Blog

“The Art of Connecting Across Difference: Improvisation for Research Communication”

The Centre for Science, Health, and Data Communication Research is delighted to be hosting Professor Patty Raun, visiting from Virginia Tech’s Centre for Communication Science. She will be giving a special edition hybrid talk as part of our Spring speaker series on Monday March 11 from 4-5pm in P226 (Poole House). To receive the full calendar invitation, email afeigenbaum@bournemouth.ac.uk.

Come and play! Join us in person if you are able, as Patricia Raun, actor and director of the Center for Communicating Science at Virginia Tech in the USA, leads an exploration of some of the tools of arts practice that can help researchers build muscles of empathy, inclusion, and awareness. Raun will share a sampling of some of the participatory improvisation exercises that can lead to more effective and engaging interactions with collaborators and with public audiences. The urgent and growing need to use all of our capacities as human beings to address the complex challenges of our world means that while we must certainly use data and appeal to intellect–we also need to use less quantifiable aspects of human connection and communication. One recent participant in one of Raun’s workshops wrote, “This work gives me an understanding of what is required to be fully expressive, and I’m increasingly aware of how important that is. My research isn’t finished until it is communicated–and this work is about approaches to connecting with others that I have never really considered before. It is really invigorating and joyful.”

Professor Patty Raun is a professional actor and voice coach, a theatre professor, and Director of the Center for Communicating Science at Virginia Tech. She has devoted her life to developing healthy and varied voices (both literal and figurative) in individuals, institutions, and communities. She served as department head of Theatre and as director of the School of Performing Arts at Virginia Tech from 2002 – 2016 and has recently shifted the focus of her research and teaching to sharing the powerful tools of the theatre in the development of communication skills for scientists, technology professionals, and scholars — helping them to discover ways to become more direct, personal, spontaneous, and responsive.  She is particularly interested in empathy development, serious games and roleplay, collaborative problem solving, and values-based leadership.