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storytelling

Black and white drawing of many animals (parrot, eagle, monkey, goose, dodo, pelican, owl, dove, duck, ground squirrel, crab) and young girl (Alice in Wonderland) listening to a mouse tell a story

Resource of the Week: Using Storytelling to Counter Misinformation in Science Communication

  C&E Section leadership co-facilitated a discussion around storytelling and misinformation as part of ESA’s Water Cooler series. Follow this link for a list of valuable resources on the intersection of storytelling, emotion, misinformation, and science communication.        

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Member Highlight: Emily Cloyd & Kika Tuff part of team launching AAAS’s new How We Respond projcet

The How We Respond project launched from AAAS includes a report and multimedia stories that highlight the ways U.S. communities are actively and effectively responding to climate change, in particular at the local, state and regional levels, and the critical role of science and scientists in their response. Section members Emily Cloyd (AAAS) and Kika Tuff (Impact Media Lab; former C&E…

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A boar.

Member Highlight: Surprising results of Nyeema Harris’s camera trap surveys in West Africa are featured by UMichigan

C&E Section Member Nyeema Harris is a wildlife ecologist at the University of Michigan. Harris and her colleagues recently published a paper on their camera study in West Africa in Conservation Letters. Harris’s camera survey documented human pressures on mammals in protected areas. It is the first wildlife camera survey in the West African countries of Burkina Faso and Niger….

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Resource of the Week: A visual “taxonomy” of great writing

  From the incomparable writer, Maria Popova, and her wide-ranging, powerful Brain Pickings site, comes a brief, thought-provoking “taxonomy” of the three levels of good science writing. Don’t stop at this article – her site is a treasure trove of big ideas, compelling quotations from science writers renown and obscure, and more.    

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Resource of the Week: The importance of storytelling in science

Numerous articles, resources, podcasts, and whole ventures (e.g., StoryCorps; The Moth) address key aspects of narrative and storytelling that are valuable (even essential) for sharing science. See the following articles for a few we find particularly helpful, insightful, or thought-provoking. These resources may change how you do things and/or provide you with useful citations to justify how you tell science…

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image of palm of a person's hand, with light refracting across the palm in a "rainbow beam." Text overtop the image reads "Now accepting submissions. Communicating Science. A new section in the Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America."

Member Highlight: New Publishing opportunity as The Bulletin of ESA launches “Communicating Science” section

Effective November 2018, The Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America will accept submissions for consideration in a new section dedicated to Communicating Science. All articles published in the series are free to publish and freely available via open access. This new space in the journal provides ESA members interested in communication and engagement a platform for publishing articles on…

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Member Highlight: New Articles on Role of National Parks in History of Ecology & More

New Web Articles on National Parks in the History of Science National parks in the United States have hosted some of the most significant and influential research projects in ecology and other fields. Many of those studies have launched new lines of inquiry, revealed new taxa, informed foundational ideas in a variety of disciplines, provided “real-world” complements to laboratory studies,…

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Woman smiling at camera; seated on steep, rocky slope in the mountains.

#MySciComm: Johanna Varner on the personal interactions that make a big difference

This week, Johanna “Pika Jo” Varner responds to the #MySciComm questions! We’re thrilled to share her story with you, not least because she was the originator and on-going inspiration for our annual #SketchYourScience activity at the C&E Section booth at annual meetings.   Johanna Varner is an ecologist who studies how climate change affects pikas, small mammals closely related to rabbits….

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#MySciComm: Diogo Veríssimo on how to market good news about the natural word

This week, Diogo Veríssimo updates his responses to the #MySciComm questions!  Diogo is a biologist turned scientist turned marketer! He decided that he could have the cake and eat it, and so focused his research on the fledgling field of conservation marketing, the use of marketing theory and techniques to help promoted biodiversity-friendly behaviors. He is currently an Oxford Martin…

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#MySciComm: Tatiana Eaves on making the jump from science to science writing and editing

This week, Tatiana Eaves responds to the #MySciComm questions!  Tatiana is a biologist, photographer, and freelance science writer living in the Washington D.C. metro area. She received her undergraduate degree in Biology, with a concentration on ecology and evolution, from Appalachian State University and minored in Geographic Information Systems. She currently writes for Ricochet Science and the Ecological Society of…

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Book cover: If I understood you would I have this look on my face?

SciComm Lit Review: Josh Silberg reviews “If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?: My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating”

“In many ways, Alan Alda represents an archetype of one type of audience member that people try to reach with their science communications. He is a non-expert. He’s interested in a range of scientific topics from health to psychology to ecology. He is exceptionally curious. If this sounds like one of your regular target audiences, then this book is for…

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#MySciComm: Sara Kuebbing on transitioning from management to research and scicomm about invasive plants

This week, Dr. Sara Kuebbing, of Plant Love Stories*, responds to the #MySciComm questions! Sara Kuebbing is a plant ecologist and conservation biologist who adores chickadees and mayapples. She is delighted to join the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Biological Sciences this fall as an Assistant Professor. Sara’s most recent #MySciComm adventure is propagating Plant Love Stories, a website devoted…

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#MySciComm: Jente Ottenburghs on adding humour to your science

This week, Dr. Jente Ottenburghs, a Belgian stand-up comic, biologist, and science writer responds to the #MySciComm questions! Jente Ottenburghs is a biologist and freelance science writer. He obtained his PhD at the University of Wageningen (the Netherlands) where he studied the genetics of hybridizing geese. During his PhD, Jente discovered his passion for sharing science with a broad audience….

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Human Connections Through, With & For SciComm: #MySciComm 2017 in Review

Retrospective by Bethann Garramon Merkle, series co-editor and Communication and Engagement Section chairperson Certainly, there is much to be learned from #MySciComm contributors regarding how to incorporate scicomm into research and how to transition into a scicomm career. But we, the editors, think the humanity this series exposes is equally important. #MySciComm shows us the people behind the science. In…

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#MySciComm: Sarah Chevalier Prather on curating science-exhibit research and development for interactive science museums

This week, Sarah Chevalier Prather responds to the #MySciComm questions! Sarah Chevalier Prather is a Museum Consultant who earned her PhD in Neuroscience from Emory University and a BSE in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University.  After graduate school, Sarah forged a path into the world of exhibit research, development, and evaluation in interactive science and children’s museums.  She lives in…

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