Talk/Webinar: Public engagement - a two-way street

Datum: 27.01.2025
Uhrzeit: 15:00 - 17:00
Vortragende(r): Anil Seth
Ort: online only
Gastgeber: Marie Luise Schreiter and Beatriz Lucas

Public engagement is increasingly recognised as an essential activity for scientists. Effective public engagement is a two-way street. One direction encourages dissemination of scientific results and their implications. The other encourages shaping of research projects and interdisciplinary collaborations. There are many challenges in both directions, including (but not limited to) negotiating the trade-offs between detail, accuracy, and accessibility. Nor is public engagement just about results. It is also about how science works, or how it ought to work, and how it is part of wider society. I will share some lessons learned from my own public engagement experience in neuroscience and consciousness research, covering public talks, art-science collaborations, podcasts and media, and more. I hope to provide both practical guidance and wider context that will help scientists become not only better communicators, but – in the process – better scientists too.

Please note:
This interactive talk is designed for young MPI researchers (PhD students, postdocs, group leaders) interested in learning how to effectively communicate their scientific work. Participants are encouraged to come prepared to briefly summarize their research question or key findings, as the session will involve practical exercises and group discussions focused on refining these messages.

Bio
Anil Seth is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience and Director of the Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex. He is also Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Program on Brain, Mind and Consciousness, a European Research Council Advanced Investigator, and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness. He has published more than 200 research papers, is a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher (2019-2023), and in 2023 he received the Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize for his public engagement contributions. Prospect listed him as one of the Top 25 thinkers in the world for 2024. His 2017 TED talk has been viewed more than fourteen million times, and his 2021 book Being You: A New Science of Consciousness was an instant Sunday Times Bestseller and a Book of the Year for The Economist, The New Statesman, Bloomberg Business, The Guardian, The Financial Times and elsewhere.
www.anilseth.com