Call for abstracts - West Hub Research Café

Share your work and how you make it accessible and engaging for a wider audience. Talk about the challenges you faced, the strategies that worked, and what you’ve learned about communicating your science beyond your field. It’s a chance to highlight the impact of your research, inspire others and learn alongside peers.

Communicating complex research to non-specialist audiences is increasingly important in a world where information circulates through fast-paced, informal, and often unregulated channels. Whether you’re working in STEMM, Social Sciences, Arts or Humanities, all researchers face the shared challenge of communicating clearly, concisely, and meaningfully, particularly in a sceptical or distracted environment.

What needs to be considered? Different audiences demand different approaches. Choosing the right tone, medium, and content is crucial. How can you bring your subject to life for audiences so they can grasp its relevance to their interests, communities, or professions?

Getting this right strengthens your research’s reach and impact, supports interdisciplinary collaboration, and builds confidence in your role as an engaged and effective communicator.

Why present?

• Share how you communicate your research to wider audiences, or how your research interrogates communication itself.
• Connect with researchers from different disciplines in an informal and supportive setting.
• Raise your profile and grow your confidence as a communicator.

In this Research Café we’ll also explore these questions and more, and we want to hear from you: your reflections, challenges, case studies, and ideas.

Suggested topics

Our theme is intentionally inclusive and multidisciplinary. We welcome a wide range of experiences and formats — from early explorations to polished strategies.

• Your Research: Share your work and show your peers how you make it understandable and engaging for a wider audience. Talk about the challenges you faced, the strategies that worked, and what you’ve learned about communicating your science beyond your field. It’s a chance to highlight the impact of your research and inspire others.
• Engaging the public: Blogs, media features, museum exhibitions, public talks, citizen science.
• Policy or practice translation: White papers, briefing notes, practical tools, co-produced outputs, outreach to professionals.
• Creative and digital communication: Social media, podcasts, infographics, comics, videos, art–science collaborations.
• Cross-sector and interdisciplinary engagement: Collaborating with NGOs, industry, schools, or community groups.
• Research on communication: Studies on impact, audience reception, misinformation, trust and equity.

Prepare your slides or poster and give details on how you share your topic with a wide audience; the techniques and channels you use (eg, social media, interviews, community groups etc), and other ways you share your work, as well as how your research interrogates communication itself.

Key information

• Submission deadline: 29 August 2025, 23:59
• Presentation formats: Lightning talk (6 minutes) and/or A0 poster

• Event: 30 SEPT 2025

  11:30 AM – 2:30 PM

• Location: West Hub, First Floor, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge

Source and submission: https://www.westcambridgehub.uk/research-cafe