Introducing the 'communicating research beyond the academy' guide
By Peter Hopkins, Newcastle University and Catherine Souch, Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)
Ten years ago, we published a Guide ‘Communicating Geographical Research Beyond the Academy’. It sought to bring together and share collective experience and learning, from within and beyond the academy.
The guide drew on the long tradition of geographers communicating their research to a broad range of audiences - policy makers, teachers, younger people, older people, people belonging to specific minority groups or another specific group - in lots of different ways.
Many of the points made in the first guide – such as those about understanding different audiences and their preferences, accessibility, clarity and brevity – still stand. This collection covers familiar issues as well as bringing new perspectives to encourage readers to reflect on the motives, means and methods of communicating geographical research beyond the academy, and to illuminate examples of good practice.
There are many possible benefits to exploring other forms of communication for your geographical research:
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It can contribute to building public understanding about the importance and value of geographical research.
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It can help you to justify and explain what public money has been spent on, and can contribute to generating research impact.
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It can contribute to enhancing your approach to teaching and learning by improving your communication skills and understanding of broader issues.
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It can enrich your teaching ensuring that your students are engaging with research that is closely connected to broader issues in wider society.
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It can help you demonstrate your commitment to meaningful change whilst challenging stereotypes about the ‘ivory tower’.
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It can be a useful way of demonstrating your commitment to being a public intellectual.
This is not a comprehensive guide, but it does cover a wide range of topics and issues. There is no best way to communicate geography beyond the academy and sometimes, your attempts will not always work out, but these can all contribute towards how engaging to be more effective next time round. It is also not a ‘how to’ guide but we hope you will find useful suggestions and pointers in each contribution. The focus is mostly upon UK case studies but there are many forms of communication that could be useful in other contexts and some of the contributions speak specifically to these. In a sense then, this is not intended to be read beginning to end; instead, we invite you to engage with those contributions you find most useful for your research.
How to cite
Hopkins, P. and Souch, C. (2023) Introducing the 'communicating research beyond the academy' guide. Communicating research beyond the academy. Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Guide. Available at: https://doi.org/10.55203/UOQQ3715
About this guide
There’s a long tradition of geographers communicating research ‘beyond the academy’ - to policy, to publics, to young people, to school teachers - whether to recruit students, for career development, critical praxis and activism, or requirements of funders to document ‘impact’. Ten years ago we published the Communicating Geographical Research Beyond the Academy guide. It sought to bring together and share collective experience and learning, from within and beyond the academy. Today, there’s ever more opportunities and modes and media with which to do this. While many of the points made – about audience, about access, about brevity and the use of plain English – still stand, this collection covers these already familiar issues as well as bringing new perspectives to encourage readers to reflect on motives, means and methods and to illuminate examples of good practice.
