4. A/Prof Suzie Sheehy on reaching a large audience
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Today's episode is a deep dive with A/Prof Suzie Sheehy.
She's both an accomplished accelerator physicist and an absolutely incredible science communicator. Her TED talk, "The case for curiosity driven research" has almost 2 million views as of posting date, she's partnered with The Royal Institution to deliver lectures with hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube, and she's the published author of the book, "The matter of everything: 12 experiments that changed our world".
Our conversation covers —
Finding partners that can amplify your voice
Finding your personal presenting style
Adapting your message to different formats and mediums
Why your comms don't need to be perfect
Getting comfortable representing your field, and a whole lot more...
Enjoy, and stay tuned for next week's episode with comedians Andy Matthews and Alasdair Tremblay-Birchall talking about how comedy can make your research more approachable. We'll be releasing weekly for the first 12 episodes, and then switching to every other week to give us a bit more time to release some of the other exciting Amplifying Research projects we have in store for you.
Find A/Prof Suzie Sheehy online:
https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/profile/99747-suzie-sheehy
https://twitter.com/suziesheehy
https://www.linkedin.com/in/drsuziesheehy
Some of Suzie's lectures:
https://www.ted.com/talks/suzie_sheehy_the_case_for_curiosity_driven_research?language=en
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLmciZdh5j4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_hirIK9eFs
Find Chris online:
https://www.amplifyingresearch.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrispahlow
Resources mentioned:
Chapters:
(00:00:00) Opening quote
(00:00:10) Intro
(00:02:11) Building your skills over time
(00:06:15) Finding the right partners for an amplifying effect
(00:13:19) The importance of a supportive environment
(00:22:25) How effective communication can lead to collaboration
(00:26:30) What to do when you don't have that support and encouragement
(00:30:33) Your comms don't have to be perfect to generate impact
(00:34:59) Trust your gut and your personal style
(00:38:19) Storytelling
(00:46:39) Finding what works for you and giving yourself permission to be the expert
(00:50:47) Communicating in different formats and mediums
(00:58:59) Getting comfortable representing your field
(01:05:52) Wrap up and what would you like to see happen in Australia
Quotes:
"It sort of all snowballed from like, sort of start something, do it well and network well, and you will just find the opportunities come your way. That's more or less been my experience."
"So people get this impression that you know, you start your own YouTube channel and if it's good enough somehow it will manage to go viral and magically opportunities will land in your lap. And you do have to be a bit more strategic than that. So my main recommendation is work with professionals... Be the talent, not the producer. Cause as a researcher, you have the expertise. And as you grow your confidence with working with different forms of communication and different types of media, you'll see the benefit from knowing that there's a team behind each piece that you do, who are going to increase the reach of that."
"Your research is fascinating to people. It's just getting it in the right format, connecting the idea with the audience, and often researchers think they have to do the whole shebang. And if you go to where the audience already is, that's half the work done for you."
"My communication has now created or helped me create and become part of collaborations that I wouldn't otherwise have become part of. It's helped me expand the problems that I can work on as a researcher."
"Authenticity is what's important. Vulnerability is okay. Your audience actually connects with you more if there's a little bit of imperfection. They don't like things that are too slick."
"What changed for me and made me into more of a storyteller is I started thinking more about the emotional journey that my audience was going on and why they should be listening to me and why they should be interested in the content that I'm taking away or that I'm trying to get them to take away."
"I never thought about writing a book until it more or less came to me as an idea from my agent, who came and literally said, have you thought about writing a book? Like that's actually how he opened it. And I really hadn't, because I I only thought I could write a popular science book once I was like a full professor. I wasn't giving myself permission to do that because I thought, Oh, there's at least 10 other people in my field who are more qualified in some scientific way, I suppose, to write that. But they're not doing it. So eventually I gave myself permission to be that person."
"I think probably the key thing between different lengths and formats is really how many key ideas you can explore in that time..."
"The other part of that I found really difficult is feeling that I had the permission to talk at that high level as a relatively junior researcher at that point in time... Feeling like, okay, well, I work in this specific bit of research, but I can't represent the entire field of physics, genomics, sociology, whatever field it is you work on. And it's a tension between our actual expertise that our academic colleagues recognize and who we are in the eyes of our audience."
"Don't pretend you have to know everything across the entire field. It's okay to say that's not my specialism, but here I can hook you up with someone who does know. And I think it's so important as well to not pretend that we know everything in science. To me, that's an old style of science communication that I feel is very outdated."
"My philosophy around communication and engagement very much does centre the human side of doing science."
"One of the things that I try and do is to be honest with where I found things challenging, where things bring up emotions... Science is supposed to be objective, but scientists aren't objective. We're human. And part of the process of doing science is how we work with that and how we reflect on that. And I've found people really love having that conversation actually."
"I would love to see specific funding streams exist for engagement."
