Course How to Communicate your PhD research

The course A325/03 How to communicate your PhD research is offered by the Graduate School of Health, Aarhus University, from spring 2025.

Criteria for participation: 
University degree in medicine, dentistry, nursing, or Master’s degree in other fields and/or postgraduate research fellows (PhD students and research-year medical students). 

Requirements for participation:
The course does not require any prior knowledge of or experience with communication or media.

The course is held in English, unless every participant speaks and understands Danish.

The course requires written preparation (10-15 lines about own research), which will be the point of departure for each participant throughout the course. A small home assignment between course day 1 and 2.

Willingness to practice communication skills during the course days.

Aim: 
The aim of the course is to ensure that the participants can convey and handle responsible research communication of their own PhD project. Through different media channels and via different presentation techniques, the participants will be able to explain and present complex research in an engaging and understandable way to an audience whether it be the general public, journalists, patients, students in a classroom or a foundation’s review committee.

Learning outcomes: 
After completing the course, participants will have:

• Insight into presentation techniques and communicative tools, to make complex knowledge understandable, interesting and relevant to the outside world.
• Experience in communicating and conveying their own PhD research.
• Knowledge of journalists' working methods and priorities as well as the researcher’s own role and rights as an expert in a media context.
• Understanding of research communication using own social media platforms
• Knowledge of responsible research communication and insight into what can be communicated, to whom and when.

Workload: The full workload of the course is expected to be 15 hours

• Two-days course: 2 x 6 hours
• Preparation and homework: 2-3 hours
• In total: approximately workload is 15 hours

Content: 
As society places increasingly heavy demands on knowledge exchange, good communication is still the researcher's responsibility. Being able to explain and convey complex research requires planning and knowledge of how to communicate your own research to the surrounding world in a responsible and engaging way. This course is a basic introduction to research communication and presentation techniques. It consists of the following elements:

1. Communicating your PhD research (who, where, when and how – and get to the point quickly).
2. Presentation techniques – know your audience, get their attention, and plan your presentation.
3. Linguistic tools that can make research communication catchy and more understandable.
4. When the journalist calls – how to collaborate with the press, handle a ‘shitstorm’, and know your role and rights as an expert in your research field.
5. Be your own editor - use social media platforms to communicate your research.

The course consists of lectures, examples and exercises with individual and peer-to-peer feedback and general discussions. The exercises revolve around participants communicating their own research in different settings and for different platforms.

Participants will learn how to communicate complex research to laymen/journalists with the help of linguistic and presentation techniques (e.g. metaphors and comparisons, get the attention and make an impact), practice how to move focus from sender to recipient, and how to find a balance so nobody will overstate things.

Several of the elements in the programme are followed by discussion. Topics include responsible research communication, the working methods of the journalist versus those of researchers, roles and rights as well as social and traditional media as a channel for research communication.

The two-day course has 25 seats and is intended for all PhD students, both newly-started PhD students and PhD students in the final phase of their programme.

Instructors: 

• Simon Fischel, Communications Officer, Health Communication
• Lise Wendel Eriksen, Special Consultant, Health Communication

Both instructors will be present during the course.

Venue: Aarhus University, Aarhus 

Participation in the course is without cost for:

• PhD students, Health Research Year students from Aarhus University
• PhD students enrolled at partner universities of the Nordoc collaboration
• PhD students from other institutions in the open market agreement for PhD courses

Course dates:

• 13 May 2025 09:00 - 15:00
• 15 May 2025 09:00 - 15:00