“I think the number one challenge is assuming that the audience cares in the slightest about what it is that you've got to tell them.” Sarah McLusky on communicating research.
Sarah McLusky is a Research-Adjacent Trainer and Consultant who works with universities in communications and engagement, education and curriculum enhancement, training STEM ambassadors and organising large scale outreach events, as well as hosting the recently-launched Research Adjacent podcast, among others.
In this episode of Research Comms, Sarah helps us shine a light on the army of professionals who make communications in research and innovation happen in the burgeoning space within the sector known as ‘research-adjacent’. We unpack exactly what the term means, why it’s important and how to achieve greater recognition for those professionals, as well as best practices for evaluating the success of research-adjacent endeavours.
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The following excerpt from the interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
What, importantly, do you mean by the term research-adjacent?
Last year, I was organising a training session for Early Career Researchers (ECRs) and we were giving some career guidance. I was pulling people together from various fields; there was me, there was somebody who works at a funder, there was somebody else who works for a publisher. I needed to call it something. For some reason, ‘research-adjacent’ popped into my head and I just ran with it because it seems to perfectly describe all of the people out there who help to co-create research environments. That is to say, the people who are working somewhere in between researchers and what you would typically think of as administrative or professional services.
Some people refer to it as the ‘Third Space’. That's always felt like a really awkward term to me. Others refer to it as ’Research Support’, but then I'm also not 100% comfortable with that because it implies that we're there to kind of prop up the research. As a colleague of mine once said, “I'm fed up with being described as supporting the talent; I am the talent!” The kind of jobs that people who sit in this ‘helping-research-to-happen’ or ‘helping-to-get-research-out-into-the-world’ space do include all sorts of different roles, such as knowledge exchange, business partnerships, research management — sometimes in very strategic roles within research settings — and fundraising for charities, among others. They’re not strictly admin, but they're not research either, so I call them ‘research-adjacent’.
Have you listened to these other episodes of the Research Comms podcast?
Do you feel that visibility of research-adjacent professions is increasing, and what is the current trajectory for people working in research-adjacent fields?
I think it’s mixed. I know some people who are in situations where they've got very supportive line managers, and they work with academics that are really on board with it. So there are pockets of good practice and awareness, but there are still massive gaps.
There are organisations like the National Coordinating Center of Public Engagement (NCCPE) and the Association of Research Managers and Administrators (ARMA) doing great work to raise the profile of these roles.
But we keep getting missed out of the conversation. There's a lot of conversation going on at the moment about research culture and how to improve that. Recently, there was a big report that came out from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) on what their future vision of public engagement was. These are things where research-adjacent professionals should be front and centre and they are not even mentioned.
There are vague references to ‘support infrastructure’, but it's almost like there's some sort of magic dust that's going to make these things happen. And there's no recognition in a lot of these really big conversations and external facing reports of the actual people who make this stuff happen. So I'd like to see more of that.
One of the areas you specialise in is the communication of research. What do you feel are some of the main barriers that sometimes prevent researchers and research institutes from getting their messages out to members of the public who need to hear about their research?
This might be a slightly challenging response, but I can tell you that I think the number one challenge is assuming that the audience cares in the slightest about what it is that you've got to tell them. I wouldn't always put it this bluntly, but I talk a lot about the ‘so what?’ question. Researchers often focus their conversations on the process of what they've done rather than thinking about why anybody would care about that.
“Why is it important? What difference is it going to make in the world?” These are the questions researchers should ask themselves, as well as thinking about their particular audience and what they know. Generally when they think of a non-specialist audience, they think they're talking to A-level students. Actually, they should be talking to 13-year-olds. Almost everything's pitched too high and almost everything is about what they want to say rather than thinking about what the audience wants to hear.
So, more listening and less talking is my first tip, and then you're really finding out about what the audience wants, really finding out what the audience cares about, what are their pain points, what are the things they’re interested in. Some of it’s really obvious. For example, if it's somebody who's got a particular illness, they don't care how you've created a fancy new drug. They only care if that's a drug that's going to help them in their daily life and that they can go to the doctors and get it now. Otherwise, it's a bit like, well, so what?
That all absolutely resonates with the work that we do, and in our experience really listening and having the opportunity to engage with your target audience is something that takes time to do. It takes skill. You need to know how to initiate and facilitate those processes. Are there any easier ways for smaller research organisations or individual research groups to be able to take part in listening exercises with their audience that don't require huge amounts of resources?
This is something that I used to do loads of in the pre-pandemic world: just hanging out with the people that you're interested in. This doesn’t necessarily mean going to give a talk. Don't only turn up at the meetings or the events if you've been invited as a speaker. Just go along as a guest and listen. That doesn't need to be a huge commitment because you don't have to prepare anything. You can just turn up. Hang out where they hang out, read what they read. People think they have to have some sort of special focus group, but you don't necessarily have to organise a focus group in order to hear from people.
And really there's always an importance to consuming the content that you want to produce. So if you want to do TikTok videos, you need to be on TikTok. Actually consuming the content that you want to create is really important, because you just learn by doing that.
What are the projects that you’ve most enjoyed being a part of and that you’re most proud of?
I had a reputation for running massive schools’ events and the British Science Festival came to Newcastle. Between myself and another colleague, we worked together and ran the whole thing. We had four venues, we had over 6,000 children. We had something like 200 different activities. We'd have 30 buses coming in, lined up down the road. It was an epic undertaking and I'm very proud that we pulled it off.
On a project like that, how do you decide if it’s had the right impact? How do you evaluate what is a successful event, and what are your metrics that you use to assess impact?
From a personal point of view, I know something has been successful if when they leave, the kids are buzzing, they've got smiles on their faces, and the teachers don't look completely frazzled. Everybody gets on the bus and gets away on time, and everything's just run according to the plan. If there have been any unexpected situations, they've been dealt with.
But that isn't always what people want as evidence of something that's been successful. And I’ve used various different techniques over the years. One of the tips that I give for evaluating impact is being really realistic about what's within your control. It happens, but it's really unlikely that you're going to change a child's life over the course of a one day science event. They'll have a fun time, maybe they might go away liking science a bit more than they did before, but making that the thing that you judge yourself on is just a losing wicket.
What you can do, though, is evaluate the impact that the activity has had on the researchers who've been involved. Because that actually is something that is more within the realm of control. And we can measure what difference it makes in whether they feel more confident in talking to schools.
You can go back to them in a year's time and ask, “has this changed how you work?” And that's where you can get that deep understanding of what's working and what's not. Because actually what’s going to improve research communication is improving the conversations that researchers have day in, day out.
It's not about doing one amazing lecture. It's about researchers understanding how to make their conversation with colleagues better, their conference presentations better, their writing better so that maybe they can get articles into better journals.
And I think that's actually a saner place to look for evaluation and impact rather than focusing on the audience out there.
Before I let you go, I just want to ask for a recommendation of one book that you've read that has perhaps changed your perspective about what you do in the research-adjacent field.
I have to say I'm not one for reading business or professional type books. But the book I do have to recommend is called Factfulness by Hans Rosling. It's about statistics. It's fantastic, and it's a masterclass in how to communicate data. And that's why it's my recommendation for your audience.
It talks about the importance of being really clear about what the data means. So it's not just throwing numbers out there. It's saying, for example, “we've got a million…” — but is a million a big number? It depends on the context and whether you're talking about a million within a pool of two million or a million within a pool of nine billion. It's about putting numbers in context and explaining what they mean and understanding what they can tell us about the world.
And I learnt a huge amount from it. That idea of putting numbers in context goes into any presentation or anything on research communication I’m doing. So that's my tip.
Research Comms is presented by Peter Barker, director of Orinoco Communications, a digital communications and content creation agency that specialises in helping to communicate research. Find out how we’ve helped research organisations like yours by taking a look at past projects…
LINKS
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About The World - And Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Roennlund
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