Dear PhD candidates,
The research schools at the Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care invite you to a workshop in popular science writing (“kronikkskriving”) on June 17 – 18 physically at Solstrand Hotel (30 km outside of Bergen) https://solstrand.com/en/front-page-eng/. We start with lunch at Solstrand from 12:00 on Thursday June 17 and end after lunch on Friday June 18.
The workshop will be held by the acknowledged online research newspaper Forskning.no https://forskning.no/ (in English known as ScienceNorway). They have received very good feedback on similar workshops arranged at other research schools in Norway.
Each participant will work on his/her own paper before (see detailed description below) and during the seminar and will get feedback from course holders and peers. When/if you eventually publish the text, you will be able to apply for 1 ECTS for dissemination. The course will be held in English, but you can choose if you like to write in English or in Norwegian. Please see more practical information on the bottom of this email.
The department will pay for the course fee, but each participant should use their own project funds (driftsmidler) to cover food and accommodation. It will cost approximately 3400 NOK including 4 meals, single room accommodation and coffee. If you do not have project funds or have already used it, please let us know and we will see if we can find any other funding sources for you.
Please register here by May 21:
https://skjemaker.app.uib.no/view.php?id=10488005
Please note that this course is quite similar to the writing course that was organized by the Norwegian Research School for Global Health.
All the best,
Bjarne Robberstad, Daniel Gundersen and Line Iden Berge
Practical information from the course holders:
Our goal is for you to have a publishable text by the end of this workshop. To make the most of our time together, we strongly suggest you submit a draft before the workshop starts.
“What should I write?”
Your expertise and your research makes your voice stand out. We encourage you to write something that is strongly related to your field of study.
You could write an opinion editorial about current affairs, a popular science version of one of your academic papers or an essay about something you find interesting.
Don’t worry too much about the format or the genre. Figure out what you want to say with the text. What is your message? Do you want to shed light on a problem? Offer a solution or an informed opinion? Share a result from your research? Or just tell the world about something we should all know about?
“Do you have anything I could look at for inspiration?”
Yes! If you read Norwegian, you can check https://forskersonen.no, where forskning.no collects every opinion editorial or popular science article we publish. If you prefer English, you could take a look at the same section at our sister site https://sciencenorway.no/researchers-zone. You can also read The Conversation https://theconversation.com, which has helped countless academics publish about their work. Remember to read the debate-sections of your favorite newspaper to see how other academics engage with the public.
“Does it have to be perfect?”
No, absolutely not. This is a rough draft. . If you run out of time feel free to just write down some thoughts about what you want to write about, or a disposition for how you’d like to write about it. Try to give the draft a title.
- Length: Keep it well under 7.000 characters with spaces. Shorter texts are often easier to work with.
- Language: The draft has to be in Norwegian or English.
- Deadline: Please submit your draft to eivind.lauritsen@forskning.no by June 11.
All the best,
Eivind Nicolai Lauritsen
Reportasjeleder, forskning.no