Introducing valuable communication and presentation skills to enable you to effectively engage audiences with the story of your research – spoken, written, live or online.
Focusing on effective storytelling for public engagement, these interactive and practical online workshops will provide you with exercises, approaches and techniques to enable you to better present your research - whether you are presenting in a lecture theatre or online at a remote conference, creating a podcast, writing a blog or finessing your research paper.
Tuesday 22nd November, 2pm-4pm: The first session will explore the fundamental building blocks of a good story – character, plot and texture – and how to apply these to communicating about your research. You will be supported through a short creative writing exercise and will look at empathy as a tool for engaging diverse audiences.
Thursday 24th November, 10am-12noon: The second session will focus on identifying and developing your natural tools for effective communication (voice, body language and gesture) and applying these skills to the communication of your research story.
Thursday 24th November, 2pm-4pm: The third session will focus on dramatic story structure and how to work with emotional impact in communicating your research.
All sessions will include opportunities to work practically in pairs with other researchers, to play with your ideas and to receive constructive feedback.
Whether you have explored storytelling before, are experienced in public engagement or a complete beginner, these sessions are designed to create a safe space for testing ideas and exploring how your work can become a compelling and memorable narrative.
This series of workshops is delivered by Polly Tisdall and Robert Holtom.
Robert Holtom is an award-winning playwright. Their work has been performed in London, Oxford, Salford, and will be playing Off Broadway in 2023. As a coach they train people in harnessing the power of story to improve how they communicate and engage with others: www.robertholtom.co.uk.
Polly Tisdall is an award winning performance storyteller and theatre-maker. She has told stories at national and international festivals, theatres and story nights across the UK and directed work for national tour. She specialises in delivering public speaking training to enable participants to effectively engage with diverse audiences: www.pollytisdall.com.
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Queries about this opportunity should be addressed to training@humanities.ox.ac.uk.
