Springtime in Paris seems a fitting backdrop for any awards ceremony but particularly so in the case of the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science program. I recently had the honour of attending the 2017 International Awards along with 14 other early career researchers from around the globe, as part of the L’Oréal-UNESCO International Rising Talents Fellowship.
There’s a few reasons why scientists may be discouraged from science communication. Here, I’m hoping to break down some of those barriers, and introduce channels and platforms where scientists can practise. First, here are some of the reasons stopping more scientists from practising science communication, as well as my rebuttals.
Early career scientists are often told that networking is important for future career prospects and mobility. Often, this comes in the form of a nudge to attend university seminars, events for local scientific professionals or national conferences. These are typically great for meeting scientists working in your city or country – but developing an international network can often be much more difficult. First, scientists are most often around others working at their university or research centre, making this their primary network. Second, travel to attend international conferences may be cost-prohibitive, especially for early career scientists. Finally, connecting with colleagues outside of the country may not be on the radar of students and postdocs, or may seem overwhelming at that stage of a scientific career.
For those who are interested in scientific events in France, we would like to alert you to a new public calendar detailing events in and around the Paris area.
The calendar is moderated by MyScienceWork, an open access scientific research network. As well as focusing on open access, MyScienceWork are particularly interested in Women in Science and are currently in partnership with the international program, L’Oréal-UNESCO’s For Women in Science .
To find out more about MyScienceWork, you can catch up on their latest news via their blog
The calendar will be regularly updated so that the coming month contains the events that we’re aware of.
Please get in touch if we are missing any events or if you would like to contribute to this calendar or any of the other calendars listed below.
There’s always an interesting science event taking place, or so it seems, and as more and more events are now being live-streamed or live-tweeted, you can often also follow events in places where you don’t live.
To help with diary planning, we’ve created Google Calendars for some of the major science cities; London and Cambridge in the UK and NYC, Boston and San Francisco in the US.
Below you can find links to all of the Google Calendars we have put together:
We try to feature all the scientific events we know of in these areas including lectures, meet-ups (including #scitweetups), exhibition openings, quizzes and the events that we’re involved with organising such as the monthly Science Online NYC (#sonyc) discussion series. Please do let us know if you can see any important omissions.
We’re also happy to add anyone as a calendar admin so that you can update it with your own science events, just get in touch.
These calendars are all works in progress – more events will be added regularly and all feedback is very welcome.
