Finding Your Research Voice: Story Telling and Theatre Skills for Bringing Your Presentation to Life - Paperback

by Itai Cohen (Author), Melanie Dreyer-Lude (Author)

Back Jacket

Learning to tell a compelling research story can have a significant impact on your career. It can make you stand out at professional conferences, on the job market, or during an ideal networking opportunity. It is easy to tell a research story badly. It takes time and effort to learn to tell a research story well. Once you have mastered the basic principles of good storytelling, you will experience the satisfaction of performing well in front of an audience.

This compact and engaging volume presents a series of essential presentation techniques followed by followed by theatre-inspired, field-tested exercises that will help you or your students improve your research presentations and informal discussions of your research at poster sessions, interviews, and other networking opportunities.

Once you've learned how to create a dynamic live performance of your research story, you may find that this professional obligation is no longer something to dread, and you might even come to enjoy presenting your research in public.

Author Biography

Melanie Dreyer-Lude is chair of the Department of Drama at the University of Alberta. She specializes in international theater collaboration, using as a laboratory to explore cross-disciplinary opportunities. Her research has included work in Germany, Turkey, Uganda, Russia, Chile, and the United States. Fluent in German, Dreyer-Lude translates and directs contemporary German plays, which have been published and produced in the United States and Canada.

Itai Cohen is a Professor of Physics at Cornell University, where he works on materials in motion. His research topics have ranged from studying the behavior of shear thickening fluids like corn-starch, to the flight of insects, to microscale robots, and the behaviors of crowds. Professor Cohen has given over 250 invited public, conference, and departmental speaking engagements. He has chaired the American Physical Society Forum on Outreach and Engaging the Public (FOEP), and organized numerous professional development workshops on science communication.

Dreyer Lude and Cohen are the organizers and instructors of the popular Finding Your Scientific Voice workshop, which has been run at various venues including Cornell University, SUNY Upstate, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the APS March Meeting.