As doctoral students, we are encouraged to keep an eye out for opportunities to widen our experiences and develop our skill sets, particularly if we wish to forge a career in academia. This blog post is a reflective piece on one such experience: planning and running an activity as part of a wider public-facing event.

The event

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)’s Festival of Social Science (FOSS) is an ‘annual celebration of research and knowledge about humans and society’ (FoSS, 2024). Events are run by researchers from UK universities across approximately three weeks and include ‘talks, performances, exhibitions, participatory events and panel debates’ in a mixture of online, in-person and hybrid formats (FoSS, 2024). The theme for the 2024 festival was ‘Our Digital Lives’.

Our public engagement activity

Our public engagement activity formed part of the one-day event, held at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. As the theme for this year was exploring our relationship with digital technology, our activity encouraged families to work together to create intergenerational maps that represented their ‘digital lives’. Family members were asked to reflect on the importance of different digital technologies and how this has changed over time. After creating their maps, each family member had a token to vote on their answer to the question, ‘Reflecting on your family’s digital lives, would you prefer to live in the past, the present or the future?’

Figure 1. Photograph of our activity set up and ready at the start of the day

Figure 2. Example of the intergenerational map to help support families with their own, created by Lucy using existing graphics from Canva

Planning our activity

I (Lucy) applied for #FOSS2024 with an idea inspired by one of the creative data-generation methods I had used with my doctoral research participants – children and young people. From sending the initial email, the festival team were brilliant in helping to bring the early idea to fruition. We had several online meetings to discuss the idea, the resources needed (plenty of stickers for little hands!) and the practicalities of running the activity within a museum space. Additionally, the ESRC provided online training sessions to support us, including a particularly memorable one on ‘innovative engagement’. During this point, my friend and fellow PhD student Jane came onboard and supported with finalising the resources I had made and all importantly, co-running the activity on the day.

Reflections on our activity

Although our respective PhDs are not related to digital technology, we nonetheless found the event to be a highly rewarding experience. It gave us the opportunity to flex our creative muscles by designing both engaging and inclusive materials, such as stickers representing technologies like glucose monitors. Problem-solving under pressure became crucial when unexpected surges of participants required effective teamwork, as we quickly established a new rhythm where one of us interacted directly with families while the other ensured that the materials remained organised and replenished. In the process, we also strengthened our communication skills, especially in encouraging dialogue between parents and children and making space for quieter participants to share their thoughts.

‘The Festival of Social Science helped us to strengthen our communication skills, especially in encouraging dialogue between parents and children and making space for quieter participants to share their thoughts.’

Engaging in an event like the Festival of Social Science highlights the importance of public engagement with research. When interacting with families, we found opportunities to talk about our PhDs, helping to de-mystify the world of academia and provide understanding about what education researchers do. Successful social science research does not occur in a vacuum and, as such, it is important we embrace opportunities to share our work and professional selves – to encourage future collaborations and innovations which ultimately benefit our society.

The activity was supported by the University of Oxford’s ESRC Impact Acceleration Account (grant reference ES/X004511/1) as part of the Festival of Social Science 2024.

References

Festival of Social Science [FOSS]. (2024). About the Festival of Social Science (webpage). https://festivalofsocialscience.com/about/