Wednesday 29 June 2011

Do we need to communicate more effectively?

I went to a really interesting conference last week that had been organised for PhD researchers who have, like me, been funded by a partner organisation outside of academia. The quality of the research presented was excellent. I got some great ideas about research design, theoretical incites were shared, and many of the findings would be extremely useful to practitioners and policy makers.

During one of the sessions an academic reflected on the fact that academic thought, and in particular social theory, just isn't valued by society at large. It got me thinking.  Is it enough to point to a failure outside of academia but not reflect on our own inability to communicate research effectively?

The conference was a case in point, this was a perfect opportunity to share academic research with funding partners, but no one from outside of the academy was invited. The funding supporting most of the research presented was designed to facilitate the linking up of academia and practice. I just wonder how seriously these partnerships are really taken? Do academics really want to engage beyond their collegues, students and peers? Or are we just following the latest funding streams, ticking the boxes and carrying on as usual? I'm not sure, I don't suppose I'm a position to judge, but I do wonder if we need to be better at communicating with the outside world.

Perhaps we need a Brian Cox for the social sciences - someone who can popularise social theory without dumming down. I wouldn't be able to sit down and understand a journal article about particle physics, so why should we expect others to engage with social theory on the same terms?