Are you an Early Career Scientist in the geosciences who wants to share your work with wider non-academic audiences? Why not apply to join the EGU Outeach Committee’s first sponsored workshop: ‘Cutting through the noise: effective popular writing & media skills for Early Career Researchers’! This online training programme can help you to develop the specific skills for writing popular articles and interacting effectively with the media, and is led by tutors who work as science journalists and broadcasters.

By the end of this workshop, you will have produced a short-form popular science article about an aspect of your research for a target audience of your choice, with advice from professional science writers. You will also have gained experience of preparing for and giving broadcast media interviews about your work, and insights into the role of journalists in science communication. And you will have developed a toolbox for sharing your research with wider audiences in other contexts, such as engaging policymakers, giving compelling public talks, and using social media.

In total, the online training requires a commitment of around 16 hours spread over two-and-a-half weeks. Some of this will be delivered as on-demand content that you can work through at your own pace, pausing whenever necessary to fit with other commitments. The on-demand content takes you through the fundamentals of popular science writing and preparing for media interviews, leading to two live sessions (each lasting three hours) that further develop your skills through exercises with individual feedback from our trainers.

The popular science writing training for this programme is led by Dr Claire Ainsworth (former Senior Reporter & News Features Editor at Nature, and previously Reporter and Features Editor at New Scientist) and Dr Mark Peplow (former Chief News Editor of Nature, and previously Editor of Chemistry World). For the media skills component, our trainers are Geoff Marsh (producer and presenter of science programmes on BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service, and podcasts for Nature and The Guardian) and Dr Jon Copley (Associate Professor of Ocean Exploration at the University of Southampton, former reporter and news editor at New Scientist, and advisor for documentaries including BBC Blue Planet II).

Workshop schedule:

• Part 1: Writing about your research for busy non-specialist audiences
  Self-study materials open on Monday 28th February
• Part 2: Live Zoom session with writing trainers (Ainsworth & Peplow)
  Wednesday 9th March
• Part 3: Media skills for scientists
  Self-study materials open at the end of Part 2 on Wednesday 9th March
• Part 4: Live Zoom session with media skills trainers (Copley & Marsh)
  Wednesday 16th March

Places for this free workshop are limited to 30 people, so if you wish to participate please complete this application form by 14 February 2022. Only EGU Members can apply to participate in this workshop and attendees will be shortlisted by the EGU Outreach Committee selected by their answers to the question, ‘why do you want to take part in this workshop?’ and to ensure a diverse group of participants.

For any additional questions, please contact: outreach@egu.eu.

• EGU Outreach Committee
• EGU outreach activities