Graduate school
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Public engagement
Public engagement work is an integral part of our graduate training programme. Public engagement activities help students develop transferable skills by allowing them to make deeper connections both with their own subject and with other subjects and with society at large. The government has already highlighted what the benefits are for postgraduate students in the Joint Statement of the UK Research Councils and the Concordant to Support the Career Development for Researchers.
Bristol contains a unique concentration of opportunities for public engagement, both as a science city, and as a centre for green living and policy development. See our table of public engagement activities (PDF, 151 KB) for full details. Many of these links are maintained by the UoB’s membership of the Bristol Natural History Consortium, in which we have a leadership role.
The transferable skills that students typically develop include writing, constructing coherent arguments and articulating ideas clearly and sensitively to a range of audiences, defending research outcomes, contributing to public understanding, and directly supporting learning and teaching.
Training postgraduate students in public engagement will help them to:
- Develop transferable skills in communication
- Engage in activities that will improve CVs as well as stimulate students' interest
- Create potential for public engagement to contribute to research, including publications
- Give students a broader view about the context of their work; it is a good challenge to think about the bigger picture
- Extremely positive feedback has been received from postgraduate students who have been involved in previous public engagement activities
- Students will be prepared to deal with public engagement activities in their future careers and a central requirement of the Research Councils in their future career as academics
Current and future events
See our Biodiversity site for details of public engagement events in 2010.
