Sharing the Story of Your Research

A crucial element of the DOROTHY programme is developing a well-integrated critical mass of interdisciplinary experts in public health crisis. To support this, DOROTHY fellows will benefit from programme-wide training. Four training events and a final conference are planned over the lifetime of the fellowships.

The first training event, which took place between 3-5 October 2023 in Dublin, was entitled ‘Sharing the Story of Your Research’. The event comprised of six sessions that had a focus on strategic engagement, communication, dissemination, and exploitation.  The event was opened by the cofunders Peter Brown representing the Irish Research Council, Dr Teresa Maguire representing the Health Research Board and Dr Darragh O’Neill representing the Environmental Protection Agency.

 

The first session, ‘What is a public health crisis?’, chaired by Dr Gráinne Walshe, included presentations delivered by Dr Ina Kelly, Consultant in Public Health Medicine for Environment and Health in the National Protection Service of Ireland, Dr Jean O’Dwyer, Deputy Head of Environmental Science and Deputy Director of the SFI Centre for Research in Applied Geoscience, UCC, and Dr Ida Milne, Lecturer in European History, Carlow College.

Subsequent sessions focused on providing the fellows, alongside invited Irish Research Council (IRC), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Health Research Board (HRB) postdoctoral students, with practical advice on how to effectively channel the outcomes of their research and share the story of their projects in ways in which their research can impact policy relevant processes. In these sessions, the workshops that were provided by Sarah Bowman, Director of Strategic Engagement, TCD, Dr Rajat Nag, Assistant Professor in Biological Engineering, and Dr Alison Connolly, Assistant Professor in the  School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science, UCD, were invaluable.

The DOROTHY fellows also received a training on how to draft an effective career development plan by Dr Edward Casey, EU Funding Manager at AMBER, TCD, which covered areas such as transferable skills, networking, interaction, and communication and offered the participants a tailor-made expert advice for further career development.

The final session consisted of the presentations by Professor Enda Cummins and Dr Rajat Nag from UCD School of Biosystems Engineering which enabled the postdoctoral fellows to gain an advanced intersectoral understanding of research. Fellows were equipped with tools that gave them the opportunity to use comic illustrations and writing as a tool of presenting their research project to non-academic audiences.