 I find the prospect of presenting my research to an academic audience daunting. Imposter syndrome looms large. It entices me to use complex ‘academic’ language and ideas to meet some nebulous scholarly standard I hold in my head. Ironically, it can have the reverse effect. Unless the audience shares your specialist knowledge, academic language can bewilder and disengage rather than communicate ideas clearly.
Chris Fleming[1] makes the point that if you can’t explain your work accessibly to a range of audiences, then the chances are you don’t understand it yourself. I know this to be true from my own experience. His solution is to practice writing in different genres and talk about your work to diverse audiences. Through regular practice, not only do you sharpen your own understandings, but your work has the potential to connect with people outside the academy, which could in turn lead to real world impacts.
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 What does an ethical approach to stakeholder engagement and knowledge translation look like?
Stakeholder engagement is often spoken of as a conduit to knowledge translation. In this framing, knowledge translation feels like a one-way transaction from researcher to community for the benefit of researchers and their institutions rather than a collaboration. Working with a feminist new materialist framing[1], I’m interested in how to create a more response-able relationship with stakeholders. Here I’m thinking with Barad’s concept of response-ability that is open to the micro political “possibilities of mutual response, which is not to deny but attend to power imbalances”[2]. |