BU Research Blog

Happy New Year to you all and welcome back!

Each day this week we’ll be posting a New Year’s Research Resolution to help you get back into the swing of things. Today’s resolution is to do some exciting and fun public engagement!

Why do academics do public engagement?  There are many reasons why academic undertake public engagement activities (such as to comply with requirements of research funders or with the Concordat for Engaging the Public with Research, or as part of the dissemination plan for a research project) however most do public engagement because it is FUN and puts the passion and excitement back into research!

There are a loads of ways to undertake public engagement, including:

• Participating in festivals
• Working with museums / galleries / science centres and other cultural venues
• Creating opportunities for the public to inform the research questions being tackled
• Researchers and public working together to inform policy
• Presenting to the public (e.g. public lectures or talks)
• Involving the public as researchers (e.g. web based experiments)
• Engaging with young people to inspire them about research (e.g. workshops in schools)
• Contributing to new media enabled discussion forums
• Working with artists (read this amazing article on the Wellcome Trust’s blog – ‘Public Engagement for Researchers Working with Artists’)

And, of course, contributing to BU’s own Festival of Learning 2015!  If you’re interested in contributing to the Festival and have not yet submitted your idea to the team, please contact Naomi Kay as soon as possible.

We have dedicated staff in the RKEO to support public engagement, as well as a modest budget to support activities.  If you would like to discuss how to get involved then please contact Rebecca Edwards.