Think: Public Engagement with Research

University of Birmingham

UoB Events

Here we provide a snapshot of the public engagement events and opportunities organized by or in collaboration with the PER Team as well as those we know of organised by UoB researchers (if you’d like your event to appear here, let us know!)

Worlds Collide IV: Sci-art collaborations with a Biomedical / Health focus

An afternoon exploring, facilitating and initiating collaborations between scientists, artists, creatives, academics and curious organisms of all varieties. We will be investigating public engagement opportunities across biomedical, health & wellbeing sectors, debating their value and hopefully fostering some new collaborative projects.

Read More “Worlds Collide IV: Sci-art collaborations with a Biomedical / Health focus”

Twitter Takeover @UOBengage

A day in the life of a… University of Birmingham researcher (as told through tweets)!

We are looking for UoB researchers to get involved in a day-long takeover of our Twitter account @UOBengage.

twitter

What does a Twitter Takeover involve?

  • You pick a date.

It could be a day where you are out and about running a public engagement activity/event or it could just be a normal day in your office or lab. It’s up to you!

  • You tweet to introduce yourself and/or your colleagues at the start of the day and make our followers aware that you have taken over our account for the day. Also make sure people know what area of research you work on. You can tweet individually or as part of research group.

An example first Tweet:

“Hello I’m XXXX & today my research group has taken over @UOBengage to introduce you to the research we do in the XXXX lab #TwitterTakeover”

  • Throughout the day you tweet about what you are doing! We’d like you to give people a sense of what your research activity involves and/or how your public engagement event is going. Feel free to also tweet photos so long as you have asked permission from anyone featured in the pictures.

Simple.

Obviously, we ask that tweets are not offensive, inflammatory, inaccurate or likely to jeopardize your intellectual property. Tweets should be easy for a non-academic to understand, so try to avoid complicated terminology unless you can explain what it means! We welcome humour and a bit of fun, so long as we also get to understand your research life a little better too! 

There are no maximum number of tweets you need to send per day… so it could be 10, 20, 30… it’s up to you! This is a great chance to get your research out to a different audience so they can learn about what you do. We are happy for you to use the opportunity to promote existing UoB researcher / UoB research-related profile accounts too, just don’t go too overboard on promo or people might switch off!

If you’d like to takeover the @UOBengage account then drop an email to engage@contacts.bham.ac.uk with a suggested date.

Upcoming Twitter Takeovers:

Nominate yourself!

Past Twitter Takeovers:

28 September 2016  – Centre for Doctoral training in Fuel Cells and their Fuels (Chemical Engineering), lead takeover contacts: James Walker and Aimee Jackson. Read all about James and Aimee’s #TwitterTakeover here.

twitter-takeover

23 November 2016 – UoB Business  Engagement took over our account during Food Matters Live, a B2B event exploring the relationship between food, health & nutrition which took place between 21 – 23 Nov 2017 at ExCeL London.

twitter-business

18 May 2017  – The TIMES Post-Graduate Forum for Midlands researchers interested in history, theology, law, philosophy, politics & arts, literature, and culture of Islamic world took over our account for their post-graduate Symposium day

3 June 2017 – Gemma Mason from the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies took over the @uobengage account to live tweet updates throughout the day at the XVIII Postgraduate Symposium, which this year was themed on ‘Multiculturalism from Late Antiquity to Modernity’.

cbpm symposium.png

 

Pint of Science

The Pint of Science festival aims to deliver interesting and relevant talks on the latest science research in an accessible format to the public – all in the pub! We want to provide a platform which allows people to discuss research with the people who carry it out – no prior knowledge of the subject is required. It is run mainly by volunteers and was established by a community of postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers in 2012. The main festival takes place annually over three days in the month of May simultaneously in pubs across the world. Pint of Science is a non-profit organisation.

For more information about getting involved as a speaker or volunteer contact Dr Charlotte Flavell, coordinator of the Birmingham events.

Website

 

 [Image: Pint of Science]

 

Astronomy in the City

 

The University of Birmingham Astronomical Society invites you to attend their programme of free public events, Astronomy in the City. Join them for stargazing, observing with portable telescopes, Observatory visits to use their half metre telescope, talks from our experts about cutting edge astronomy research, and your chance to ask them anything about astronomy!

Astronomy in the City events are strictly all ticketed, and begin in the Poynting Building on our Edgbaston campus, within easy reach of local transport links. For further information or to see if you might be able to get involved visit their website.

Astronomy in the City is brought to you in partnership with the University of Birmingham Astronomical Society, the Birmingham Astronomical Society, the Knowle Astronomical Society, Solihull School and Circles of Influence.

[This is listed under internal events as it is organized through researchers at the University. The events are as stated open to the public]

Cafe Culturel

Café Culturel is the UK’s first student-led discussion Café and aims to place Science within its cultural context. For each event, mostly taking place during the academic term, a guest speaker will deliver a short, informal lecture on a topic of their choice, exploring the interplay between the sciences and the humanities. Then, after a drink, it will be over to you to discuss the ideas, query the speaker and illuminate the concepts.

Cafe Culturel is an initiative run by Dr. E.C. Toescu and students from the Liberal Arts and Natural Sciences and Biomedical Sciences courses at the University of Birmingham.

Get in touch if you are interested in being a speaker or finding out more: cafe.culturel.birmingham@gmail.com

Blog page

Facebook page

Local legacy

Did you know we have some very famous alumni? Their legacy still lives on in many labs and research groups across the University whether you are aware of it or not. Does your work link back to work done by our famous alumni from the past and if so how can you present the historic story of your research field to others and explain how research continues to add value to challenges which continue to evolve over time.

Useful links:

Events Promotion Toolkit

There are a number of ways in which you can promote your event. In doing so, it is important that you provide the following details:

      • What date(s) is your event taking place?
      • What are the start and finish times? (particularly important for the web as both fields need to be completed)
      • Who is the event aimed at? Who is it for?
      • Who to contact for more details

Promoting to an external audience

  • Main University events pages
    These pages are targeted at anyone with an interest in attending events here at Birmingham, both externally and internally, so this should reach a large audience. You can submit an event using the events submission form.
  • Social Media (Twitter, Facebook)
    If you have your own social media channels (eg. Twitter, Facebook), they are good platforms for promoting your event and getting people talking about it before it happens. Alternatively you can encourage owners of relevant accounts (with a link to the event topic) to promote it on your behalf. View the directory of social media channels.
  • School events pages
    If your event is related to School research activity it may be suitable for the School events pages. Contact your Web Manager if you would like to have it added. This will be seen by visitors to the School site, so will help to get those interested in the broad subject area to see it.

Promoting internally

You are welcome to write a blog piece for this site and we are happy to add your public engagement events/workshops etc. on to our Twitter account and events calendar. Just get in touch via engage@contacts.bham.ac.uk

You can also try the following:

  • The Intranet
    Items added to a College events pages should appear on the individual School Intranet areas, and items posted to individual schools will appear in the College area, so they will have wide coverage. Events can also be configured to appear on the main University Intranet events pages. If you would like to have an event added to the Intranet please contact your College Web Editor or Web Manager. Alternatively you can submit an event for the main University Intranet event pages using the events submission form (see above).
  • Buzz
    Buzz is the University of Birmingham’s award winning magazine, published every two months. If you have news, events or feature ideas please contact university-buzz@bham.ac.uk
  • Or Buzz Bitesize…
    Circulated monthly, buzz bitesize is an e-newsletter that is sent to all University staff and provides the latest news, views, events and opportunities from across campus in a handy to read digest style. You can submit content via the Buzz Bitesize submission form.
  • School newsletters
  • School mailing lists
    Head of school PA’s will have details of school mailings lists for staff and students
  • Posters
    On relevant notice boards
  • Canvas
    All students are registered onto Canvas (the new Virtual Learning Environment) when they start, so this is a good way to target them with relevant events. Contact your School Canvas coordinator to have something added.