Storytelling for Researchers

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Introducing valuable communication and presentation skills to enable you to effectively engage audiences with the story of your research – spoken, written, live or online.

Focusing on effective storytelling for public engagement, these interactive and practical online workshops will provide you with exercises, approaches and techniques to enable you to better present your research - whether you are presenting in a lecture theatre or online at a remote conference, creating a podcast,writing a blog or finessing your research paper.

Led by storyteller and theatre-maker, Polly Tisdall, and writer and narrative coach, Robert Holtom, the workshops will take place over three, two-hour sessions:   

Friday 26 February, 10:00 – 12:00: The first session will focus on identifying and developing your natural tools for effective communication (voice, body language and gesture) and applying these skills to the communication of your research story.

Friday 26 February, 14:00 – 16:00: The second session will focus on dramatic story structure and how to work with character, conflict, contrast and emotional impact in communicating your research.

Monday 1 March, 10:00 – 12:00: The third session will focus on the importance of character and world building in creating compelling narratives and the importance of empathy for engaging diverse audiences. You’ll analyse good (and bad) examples of written content as well as create your own.

There will be follow up one to one sessions available with Polly or Robert on Friday 5 March and Tuesday 9 March.    

Polly Tisdall is an award winning performance storyteller and theatre-maker. She has told stories at national and international festivals, theatres and story nights across the UK and directed work for national tour. She specialises in delivering public speaking training to enable participants to effectively engage with diverse audiences: www.pollytisdall.com.

Robert Holtom is a prize-winning writer. His short stories have been published in various anthologies, his plays performed in theatres in London and Oxford and he is working on his first novel. He trains people in harnessing the power of story and narrative to improve how they engage and communicate with others.

For further information please contact training@humanities.ox.ac.uk   

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