Can engaging with the public help your career in academia?
Dr Steve Joy At a recent talk to early career academics, I was arguing for the importance of engaging non-academic audiences in your research, when one disgruntled participant shot back that I was encouraging them to become celebrities. This wasn't what I intended, but the response isn't untypical. It reflects an unease among a lot of early career researchers: on top of everything else, do I really have to learn to become a media don or children's entertainer? Is this what I actually need to do to improve my career prospects? Advocates will counter, rightly, that this view of public engagement is unfair. They will say that the reason to do public engagement is not solely to advance one's own career, and that we have a duty to explain to the public what we do. However, motivations for engaging the public can feel more practical than ethical. We all know that it's simply what's expected by the Research Excellence Framework (REF) assessors, the funders, universit