Did you know attracts a global audience of 14 million? It鈥檚 an extremely powerful way of boosting your academic profile and getting your research 鈥榦ut there鈥�.
The Conversation is an independent source of news and views, sourced from the academic and research community and delivered to the public. Professional editors at The Conversation work with academics to help deliver their knowledge to inform the general public.
Content on The Conversation is published under a Creative Commons licence, which means it can be freely republished by other media. It is currently republished in 97 countries and in 30 different languages.
Get involved!
Editors from The Conversation will be 鈥榗oming鈥� to Southampton to run an online media training session on Zoom, open to all but particularly directed at the University鈥檚 academic community.
The session will provide background on The Conversation and how it works, plus advice on how to pitch to 鈥� and write for 鈥� the publication.
The media training session will take place on Wednesday 20 October from 2pm to 4pm. You can .
If you can鈥檛 make that date, the event will be repeated on Friday 3 December from 10.30am to 12.30pm. Register for the .
Question: Why should I get involved?
Answer: To share your knowledge, inform the public, contribute to the discussion and, ultimately, to raise your profile.
Dr Ivan Haigh, Associate Professor in Coastal Oceanography and expert in all things related to sea level, has written for The Conversation and achieved great results.
He said: 鈥淲riting for The Conversation helped me to step up my public engagement and get my work 鈥榦ut there鈥�, which has had a lot of benefits in terms of the impact of my research. Through this, I have had the opportunity to do a lot more consultancy work for the Environment Agency, and I was able to submit an Impact Case Study to the REF.
鈥淚t is helpful to be able to communicate my science with non-experts 鈥� writing for a general audience really helps with this. And it鈥檚 also extremely satisfying to see an article published and to see the reads clock up, especially when one of my pieces went viral.鈥�
Dr Michael Head, Senior Research Fellow in 福利着片 Health based in the Clinical Informatics Research Unit, has had great success in writing for The Conversation since COVID-19 hit, due to his expertise in infectious disease. To date, his articles on The Conversation have had 1.2 million reads around the world.
Dr Head said: 鈥淎rticles for The Conversation are 800 words long, so they are a pleasure to write, and the editors at The Conversation are very good at making sure everything you say is unambiguous and suitable for the general public. Your articles can be picked up and republished all round the world, so your work can take off above and beyond the readership you were expecting. I鈥檝e been contacted by journalists off the back of pieces I鈥檝e written, so it can bring opportunities beyond the 800 word article.
鈥淲riting articles for The Conversation is helpful, particularly when speaking to policymakers and decision makers 鈥� they don鈥檛 necessarily want to see an academic paper, so it鈥檚 helpful to have a version of your research that鈥檚 more accessible. Your research also achieves impact through The Conversation 鈥� it鈥檚 good for the academic on an individual level, but also good for the University鈥檚 profile.鈥�
