Communicating (hi)stories: Navigating storytelling between research, museums and activism

• Department of History

This one-day workshop investigates the politics and dynamics of research communication through a panel discussion and an interactive session with guest Alberto Rizzelli (University of Padova)

Due to unforeseen circumstances, Insaf Dimassi will not be able to participate. The event will take place in a shorter form, from 11am to 1.15pm on the same day.

The EUI’s new strategic initiative puts engagement with society at its core. This initiative’s guidelines stress co-creating knowledge together with external actors and communicating our work beyond the confines of academia. As PhD students and academics, how do we make sense of these guidelines on how to convey our research to a wider public? Beyond vague expressions such as external actors, whom can we tell our research to, whom can we write new stories with, and what is gained or lost in the process?

We invite you to reflect on these questions in a one-day workshop with two experts who have chosen to communicate their knowledge and research in various ways: articles and blog posts, social media content, workshops, public speaking at festivals and in TV programmes. Both speakers have drawn productive connections between academic work and wider storytelling. Both of them also work with topics that can be difficult to communicate, in part because some people would prefer not to hear about them by marking them as controversial. These topics include histories of gender violence and of non-normative sexualities, as well as the current realities of immigration and citizenship in Europe, and political issues concerning climate change adaptations.