All 5 entries tagged Public

New Episode: Music, Philosophy & the Art of Public Engagement

Writing about web page https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/exchanges/podcast

The final podcast of 2025 brings a positive note to the art and science of academic public engagement.

Yes, it is our final episode of the Exchanges Discourse 2024, and we’re going out on an extremely positive note. In this episode I talk with recent Exchanges author Giulia Lorenzi (University of Warwick). We talk through her career as a philosopher and musical scholar, with a particular attention on her paper dealing with public engagement with academic research. A topic you can be sure is near to the heart of many academic editors such as myself.

Listen in here:https://open.spotify.com/episode/3HeLf9SdLS74qyFdtinRYX

In her paper, ‘Musical Reflections’: An experience with public engagement (Vol 12.1) Giulia explored the challenges and inspirations which arise when scholars seek to engage disparate members of the public with academic research and discourse. Far from meeting disinterest or disengagement, Guilia discovered that she had an amazingly positive experience, which in part helped to reinvigorate the joy of research for her. Certainly, it is an experience Giulia notes that she wishes more academics could experience or have such positive encounters with the public.

As has been our long tradition, we also chat about her publishing experiences with other journals, and especially the impact that editor and reviewer comments can have authors – for better or for worse. We close out our discussions with some advice for other newer authors in the early career and post graduate researcher community too.

If you want to skip to the key parts of the episode – here’s the time-index for it.

Timecodes

00:00 – Start

00:44 – Introductions

03:18 – Discussing the paper

10:40 – Public engagement challenges

16:40 – Key messages from engagement

18:35 – Future research publications

20:12 – Academic publishing experiences

26:02 – Advice to early career authors

30:44 – Outro (end)

So, that’s it for podcasts for this year, and after a very slow start I’m delighted to say we picked up the pace over the summer and our recent special issues to bring you a goodly number of episodes. In fact, this year has seen the second most episodes and the second longest amount of new content in our five-year history. 14 episodes, lasting a grand total of 6hrs 41 minutes – oh so close to our record output of 2022 at 6hrs and 48 minutes. The good news is I’ve already two podcast recording slots pencilled in for January and February, and hopefully the next in our series of guest episodes from our Irish collaborators to come too.

So, I’d just like to close out this year of podcasts to thank all my guests for their chat and their time. Naturally, if you’re a past author of Exchanges and haven’t appeared on the podcast as of yet, the door is always open! See you for a slightly revamped series 6 in 2025 then!

Gareth Johnson : 11 Dec 2024 14:04 |  Tags: Engagement Episode Music Philsophy Podcast Public |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

New Episode: Outreach, Reaching Across the Divide & Engaging the Public

Writing about web page https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/BDEDZbjNcNb

A new episode relating to the research culture special issue is now live.

I am pleased to announce we have a new episode of the Exchanges Discourse podcast, the first in a series of episodes that are coming your way over the next couple of months. This is the first in a mini-series featuring authors who contributed to our special research culture special issue, and I couldn’t be happier to have such a gracious guest as Phil Jemmett from Warwick’s own WMG. Listen to our conversation here:

• https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/BDEDZbjNcNb [35:42]

As always we talk a lot about my guest’s life and work, but especially the article Phil and colleagues contributed to our recent journal issue – entitled: Engaging Academics with Outreach: How the ‘STEM Connections’ model empowers staff. Along the way we also talk about Phil’s publishing experiences, thoughts on being a public academic including matters of opinion on the best way to represent yourself and your research to a class of potentially disengaged school children. As such, our conversation touches on various techniques for engaging the public with topics of academic research and expertise. As a result, we get chatting about how to improve your academic presentational skills and especially the best routes to capturing an audience’s attention.

As always the episode concludes by offering some advice to less seasoned academic authors in publishing approaches and ways in which they can make their papers really sing.

You can read Phil and colleagues article here: https://doi.org/10.31273/eirj.v11i3.1544

As always, my thanks to my guest for their thoughts, and I hope you enjoy the episode.

Next up, as I recorded it last week, is a long and exciting chat with fellow editor and author Jonathan Vickery on the subject of publishing and the knowledge economy. Hopefully with you this time next week!

Gareth Johnson : 26 Sep 2024 15:19 |  Tags: Discourse Engagement Exchanges Outreach Public Publishing |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

New Podcast Episode: A Conversation with…Dr Julia Gauly

Writing about web page https://anchor.fm/exchangesias/episodes/A-Conversation-withDr-Julia-Gauly-enac6f

“Criticise other people as you would like be criticised… .That’s what I try to keep in mind…that’s a small sentence, which can make such a difference”

>Listen to: A Conversation with...Dr Julia Gauly

We reach episode 10 in the first season of The Exchanges Disocurse podcast series, with a delightful interview with Dr Julia Gauly. An early career fellow at the IAS and based at the Warwick Medical School, Julia’s work focuses on evaluating sexual health information provision and, especially as a route to enhancing accessibility and public health, the impacts from increased its availability via local pharmacies. Julia also takes the time to share her own learning journey with respect to publishing, along with providing some words of advice for first time and other early career authors.

Episode 11 is already recorded, a conversation this time with Dr Isabelle Heyerick and later today I'll be recording episode 12 which will focus on the 'cultural representations of nerds' forthcoming special issue in 2021. I'll be joined by the two leads for that special issue to chat about what it means, and also discuss the planned event tying into the issue.

Please do have a listen, and if you like what you hear share the love! If you'd like to get in touch with the podcast with an idea for an episode, or to propose a guest, then you'll find our contact details here.

Gareth Johnson : 03 Dec 2020 16:04 |  Tags: Episode Gauly Health Information Pharmacies Podcast Public Sexual |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Journal Management in Challenging Times

Writing about web page https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/

When I took over running Exchanges back in early 2018, I expected to deal with various challenges. Getting to grip with the journal system, learning to work with my team of editors, tackling intricate author questions and resolving ethical publishing dilemmas: these were anticipated and, to be fair, encountered. Conversely, dealing with an unprecedented public health crisis necessitating personal isolation and remote working for an extended period of time wasn’t even at the back of my mind. Perhaps it should have been, but I suspect I wasn’t alone in my assumptions.

As readers will know, Exchanges is a scholar-led, editor-mediated academic journal, run by and for early career researchers. My editorial team, scholars all, are scattered around the globe in four different times zones and at least five countries. The Corvid-19 outbreak is also a global event, meaning each of us is dealing with unexpected challenging personal and professional circumstances of varying levels of severity. As of writing, this week the outbreak has especially impacted on the UK and its universities, and I’ve now been advised to work from home for the foreseeable future. Luckily, this is something I do on a regular basis, although I’m going to miss my frequent personal interactions with the Institute of Advanced Study’s staff, fellows and the rest of the Warwick university community. Not to mention my lovely office!

We are though, an international journal with contributors around the globe who are also likely finding their lives and work impacted by illness, closures and disruptions. We have always prided ourselves as a journal with an ethical empathy and understanding of challenges faced by our contributors, embedded within our professional ethos. Nevertheless, my team and I understand that our normal timescales for contributor responses may need to be more flexible for the time being. Personal and family health and well-being must come first.

What does this mean for the journal? I am thankful virtually all of Exchanges’ core editorial work can be conducted remotely, which means the journal can continue to function as close to normal as we can manage. However, there is no denying that through the uncertainties introduced into all our daily working lives, that our anticipated future issue timescales will have to be treated with a little caution. I’m hopeful that we will still produce the anticipated Spring volume of Exchanges on or close to our regular April publication date, but right now I’m treating this with a little caution.

Nevertheless, if you are currently or considering contributing to Exchanges and have any concerns about deadlines or timescales, please don’t hesitate to speak to your editor or myself directly. We are always happy to discuss your concerns.

I should note, all our currently calls for contributions – Nerds and Loneliness, Falsehoods as well as our general call, remain open and we look forward to reading your articles and abstract submissions.

Gareth Johnson : 19 Mar 2020 15:30 |  Tags: Covid-19 Crisis Emergency Health Public Resilience |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Article Focus On: Interviews – why do they matter?

One of my favourite kinds of articles frequently submitted to Exchanges are interviews, also known as ‘Conversations with…’, with key disciplinary figures. Since the first issue where Walsh interviewed Oliver Sacks [1] through to Kremers and Eggert’s efforts in the most recently published volume [2, 3], these have been perennially popular articles for authors and readers alike. Personally, I love the idea that through being an author of one of these pieces provides the author with a great excuse to talk directly with the great and the good within their field. You see, it can be challenging when you’re trying to network at conferences and other academic events, to think of a good topic to break the ice with an ‘academic celebrity’. I’ll admit it, I’ve been tongue tied myself when meeting notable names in my own field, and gushing ‘Oh I just love your books!’, isn’t quite the professional demeanour you might want to project. Nevertheless, asking someone if you can interview them for a publication is a great starter to at least a good chat, and who knows what else.

In terms of what we expect from an interview, the outline on our author guidance page is quite brief:

A dialogue with significant research figures in any field, with a particular focus on their interdisciplinary contributions (3,000-5,000 words).

Although, it does go on to note that authors considering writing one of these ‘are strongly encouraged to discuss the proposed content with the Senior Editor or a member of the Editorial Board, prior to submission. This will allow us to scope if the proposed piece will be suitable for Exchange’s diverse readership.’ [4]. As a result, I’ve realised it’s probably worth talking briefly about the type of content we’re looking for, to help guide future authors.

Content

In terms of the content, what the best of these articles do is initially to provide some context about the interviewee themselves. While we have had some considerable public intellectuals interviewed in past issues, there’s no guarantee a figure who is a giant in your field will always have instant recognition among our diverse readership. Hence, providing a potted biography at the start of an interview article really helps set the scene for readers and draws them in to why this person is important and worth their time reading about. For me, the best revcent example of how to approach this section of the article was provided by Roca-Lizarazu and Vince [5] who not only take the time to introduce their interviewee, Stef Craps, but also a rather neat introduction the field within which he has been so crucial. Aspiring Exchanges authors could do a lot worse than by following their approach.

Questions & Answers

One thing we don’t demand of our interview articles, is that interviewers make use of a pre-defined set of questions. We want the authors themselves to put their own particular spin on things and have an effective presence within the article. Certainly, as an experienced research interviewer myself, I know some of the best and most revelatory conversations can be rather freewheeling ones, rather than ones slavishly sticking to the script. That said, given our interdisciplinary nature as a journal, I would hope to see every interview develop conversations around each interviewees’ career, their influences and especially how/where they see the relevance of their work to the wider domain. We often also see interviewees holding forth on the ‘state of the art’ within their discipline, and sometimes looking towards the future. Alongside this, there is often some useful discussions around the authors and works they’ve been influenced by themselves. Given their expertise, what has piqued their interest, is generally something aspiring or new scholars within a field are likely to be very interested in reading about.

Benefits

As a result, this means interviews serve rather neatly as mini-review articles, exploring the field as guided by a noted expert. I believe this provides a reason why these types of articles are some of our most downloaded ones. That is because for scholars new to a field, they provide a wonderful guided entrance point through which to explore and expand their own knowledge. The other reasons I think they are popular are firstly partly due to the name recognition of the interviewees, big names are always a draw for scholarly journals as authors or subjects of discussion. Hence, as an editor, ever mindful of increasing our readership and visibility across the academy, I find them very useful.

That said, the other key reason is generally the sheer readability and accessibility these conversation articles offer. Even as an interdisciplinary journal, we cannot claim that every paper will be accessible to all readers, there is just no escaping from the specialised lexicon of most fields at times. Nevertheless, within interviews scholars are generally speaking in more naturalistic tones than you would find, say, in one of their articles or books. Similar to a lecture, this permits readers from outside their immediate field to more readily access their expert thought, insight and knowledge. Hence, I strongly believe this demonstrates why interviews are very much at the heart of Exchanges’ mission to propagate and support interdisciplinary research discourse.

Setting Up Interviews

Now, how do you go about setting up an interview for the purposes of publishing with Exchanges? Well, you’ll have to wait until my a future post for a discussion of that.

[1] Walsh, J., 2013. Oliver Sacks. Exchanges: The Warwick Research Journal, 1(1). Available at: https://doi.org/10.31273/eirj.v1i1.69

[2] Kremers, R., 2018. Conversation with…Wendy Larner. Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Journal, 6(1). Available at: https://doi.org/10.31273/eirj.v6i1.243

[3] Eggert, J.P., 2018. Researching Terrorism and Political Violence: An Interview with Louise Richardson. Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Journal, 6(1). Available at: https://doi.org/10.31273/eirj.v6i1.266

[4] Exchanges, 2018. Author Guidelines. Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Journal. Available at: https://exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/guidance

[5] Roca-Lizarazu & Vince, R., 2018. Memory Studies Goes Planetary: An Interview with Stef Craps. Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Journal, 5(2). Available at: https://doi.org/10.31273/eirj.v5i2.245

Gareth Johnson : 03 Dec 2018 17:46 |  Tags: Articles Guide Intellectuals Interviews Public Scholars Style Submissions |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem