On a Wednesday evening in early May 2022, in a packed upstairs room of a pub in Easton, east Bristol, the usual pub drinks were accompanied by two voices from the IEU. We were there to speak on “Wandering Wombs and Menstrual Health” as part of Pint of Science, a worldwide science festival that takes researchers into their local pub, café or community space to share their scientific discoveries.

The event was an opportunity to share something of our research with a wider audience. Gemma researches women's reproductive and mental health, while Flo’s PhD research is in the area of pregnancy pharmacoepidemiology, specifically antidepressant use during pregnancy.

We first heard about the opportunity to get involved in Pint of Science when one of the organisers emailed Gemma having seen some research discussions on Twitter. And we thought that Flo’s research would provide a good balance to Gemma’s and a different angle on women's health.

It seemed a good opportunity, even though it was a bit daunting. We saw doing Pint of Science presentations as a way to organise our thoughts and articulate our research for different audiences. This could be the lay audience in a Bristol pub or in conversation with friends and family. And this thought process also helps in presenting work to academic conferences and in teaching.

How the evening supported engagement

During the evening, we spoke for about 25 minutes each and included amusing anecdotes and links to real-life situations and news stories that the audience would be familiar with. We spent a lot of time planning our talks, thinking about appropriate use of language and how to be clear without misleading the audience. And we practiced on friends and family to check that we had the right balance. With academic presentations sometimes the speakers can allow themselves to just talk through their slides knowing that no one is expecting a really great talk. With this event, we were much more aware of the need to keep people engaged; it is a slightly different skill and a bit more like teaching.

In between our two talks, once the audience had refreshed their drinks, we did a quiz with interesting and surprising facts (for example, did you know that NASA thought its first female astronaut might need 100 tampons for a week in space?). And, at the end we answered questions from the audience and chatted informally with audience members.

There was also a further opportunity to promote the event and our research when Gemma was invited to speak about it beforehand on the local Bradley Stoke radio station.

The evening was sold out with an audience of 50 people. Although many had a science background, just over a third of those who answered the question said that they did not study science or work in a science job.

The crowd was heavily dominated by women, slightly disappointing but unsurprising given the topic of the evening’s discussions (see our blog post for more about the challenge of broader engagement on women’s health issues). It was also noticeable that the vast majority of the audience were aged between 25 and 44, with no attendees over the age of 50. The age profile, along with the gender imbalance, suggests that the subjects of menstruation and pregnancy that we spoke about were most attractive to people who directly relate to those issues, although we feel it is important to build up everyone’s awareness.

How the event impacted participants

At our Pint of Science event, the room was packed and the audience was clearly engaged – the reactions from the crowd, whether it was laughter or audible gasps at some more shocking details, can be heard on the videos from the evening.

The questions asked were also engaged and thoughtful, we had interesting chats with people at the end and there was a clear desire to continue the conversation. Although we did not go to Pint of Science thinking about patient participation or people wanting to be involved long term, the first question asked was “how can I be involved in your research?”, which was really nice.

And interest continues, with Flo receiving an email from a lady who couldn't make it because she had COVID but was keen to listen the recording.

How it impacted us and IEU

We learned a lot from doing Pint of Science and found it energising. It helped us talk about our work and articulate it more clearly, which will be useful for academic talks and teaching, as well as public engagement. After the periods of COVID-19 restrictions, it was also good to be presenting to people in real life and practicing those skills again.

You can get quite bogged down as an academic in the idea that the person you're writing for is a reviewer, whereas presenting to the public like this helps us to have in mind the people that we are doing our research for. And that might be in the pub on a Wednesday night. It feels a bit more useful and focused.

What we have learned from this experience also feeds back into IEU (and into University of Exeter where Gemma now works). We hope that it can encourage others who might be interested in doing similar public engagement activities. The videos of our talks are publicly available, enabling them to reach a wider audience and showcase some of IEU’s work. And since the event some of the work that Flo spoke about in her talk has been adapted and reused as part of the IEU’s exhibit at the FUTURES research festival aimed at older children and their parents.

We would encourage anyone interested in doing similar to get involved. It is particularly important to participate in public engagement when you do population health. Going out and speaking to people and helping them to understand and trust that the researchers at the IEU are doing good, robust research is really important. And we really enjoyed doing it.

Follow @MRC_IEU for more ways to connect with IEU’s research.