Abstract

Social sciences can be difficult to communicate to non-academic audiences. Often, researchers use language and terminology that people find hard to understand. As a result, research outputs with potential for impact don’t always reach the societal groups who can implement change.

The Glasgow Social Sciences Hub (www.gla.ac.uk/socscihub) is an online platform where we showcase the latest research from across the University of Glasgow (UofG). Our Communications Team works with researchers to help them present their findings in an engaging and accessible way that people can relate to.

Our mantra: ‘High-quality communications underpins high-quality engaged research’

How do we do this:
- We encourage academics to embed quality communication processes throughout their projects. By inviting audiences in early, we’re able to build an engaged group of stakeholders throughout the research journey.
- We support with audience analysis: working with academics to establish who they want to reach and understand how that audience consumes content.
- We collaborate with researchers to translate complex ideas in an accessible way.
- We produce engaging content: using our communication skills, we make research outputs exciting and relatable by embracing video content, graphics, professional and event management.
- We enable academics to raise their profile externally and established themselves as ‘trusted voices’ in their specialist areas of research.

Lesson:

By running engaging activities and making content accessible, we encourage communities beyond academia to feel part of our work, whether it’s as research users, participants or people who will benefit from our research findings.

Background:

Launched in October 2022, the Glasgow Social Sciences Hub brings together the latest research outputs, events and news from across the UofG. Unlike other university platforms and more traditional outputs, the Glasgow Social Sciences Hub presents research in an accessible way that our target audiences can relate to.