At the Science Slam Tour, you can show high school students that science is not something to be afraid of

Explaining her work and many years of research in a few minutes in a way that even high school students can understand is a challenge that Barbora Winterová took on more than two years ago when she became interested in participating in the Science Slam competition.

She was inspired to get involved in this popularization activity by a colleague who had won the national round of Science Slam in the past. In this competition, scientists are asked to present their research to a lay audience in an entertaining way and try to engage, entertain, and educate them as much as possible. However, at that time, the competition had a limited selection of topics, so Barbora got involved in another activity—Masaryk University's Science Slam Tour, in which young researchers visit high schools and try to engage young people with their work.

How to engage high school students
Barbora considers performing in front of a high school audience to be a specific discipline. What she enjoys most about the performances is discovering that high school students often view the presented issues in a completely different way. "It was a big challenge for me to think about how I could appeal to them, what pop culture references I could put into my presentation, when I would be funny and when I would be embarrassing... It's completely different from talking to other scientists, or even my peers."

From the seas to macroecology
In her presentations, Barbora introduces two areas of interest. The first is the protection of marine protected areas in Sri Lanka, where she traveled in person to evaluate with local colleagues whether the protection of selected sites is working or not. "Among other things, we looked at the impact of dynamite fishing, chemical pollution, and overtourism. I consider the latter to be a particularly important issue, but one that has no easy solution."

The second area she has been researching for a long time is macroecology. This deals with the processes that determine where species occur, how numerous they are, and their changes in space and time. Barbora's research focuses on how the scale of observation can influence the results of ecological studies.

She also mentions her favorite example of the influence of scale during her presentation. It concerns two studies from the US that examined the occurrence of two identical bird species. While the first study found that these species occurred together, the second found that they were mutually exclusive. However, there is a simple explanation for this apparent contradiction: the studies used different scales of observation. In the first case, large research areas were used, and both species found a suitable habitat there. In the second case, however, the research areas only included this habitat, and the birds drove each other out of their territories.

„Já pracuji s podobně zdánlivými rozpory v případě ryb na korálových útesech. Ráda bych, aby si rozdíly způsobené měřítkem uvědomovalo více lidí včetně vědců. V mnoha případech napříč obory by bylo vhodné si uvědomit, že výsledky jejich práce by mohly být v jiném měřítku rozdílné. Jinak to může vést k problematickým generalizacím a rozhodnutím,“ zdůrazňuje Barbora Winterová.

Friendship across disciplines
According to her, the Science Slam Tour is a great opportunity to show young people that science is diverse and accessible to everyone. It is not only for this experience that she recommends other doctoral students to get involved in this activity.

The performers go through several workshops that help them create their presentations. “Thanks to the Science Slam Tour, I learned to select the most important aspects of my research, because five to eight minutes is not much time to explain a complex topic. This is useful elsewhere as well, because even at a professional conference, you often only have about ten minutes to present your work. I am also better at choosing what will interest a lay audience and what will interest experts."

The workshops also taught her to look at her research from a different perspective. “I remember that after one of the workshops, the lecturers were nervous that I wanted to tackle such a mathematical topic as scale. After the second one, they were thrilled that I managed to explain such an abstract concept in a clear way. But I couldn’t have done it without their insight,” Barbora adds with a laugh.

The tour also gave her the opportunity to meet colleagues from other fields. She likes the trips with a team consisting of herself, a psychologist, a historian, and a molecular biologist the most. “We talk about all kinds of things from all four fields, mix them together, and come up with unexpected and excellent ideas,” concludes Barbora.

Would you like to join the Science Slam Tour team and learn about and popularize "your" science at secondary schools? Contact us by the end of February at scienceslam@muni.cz. In addition to researchers, the team is also looking for a performance moderator and event coordinator.