What motivated you to participate in
a Science Slam in the first place?
First of all, they are fun! You meet a
number of interesting people outside
of your field, and every time I partici-
pate in a Science Slam, I also learn so
much from other people, what they do
and how they talk about their own re-
search. The first time I participated in a
Science Slam, I was one of the organ-
izers of the Max Planck PhDnet Junior
Scientists’ Conference “Visions in Sci-
ence”. We were discussing in the or-
ganization team about finding a pres-
entation format which would make
scientific findings easily accessible
und understandable to people from
different research disciplines, or even
complete laypeople. So, we came up
with the idea of trying a Science Slam,
with the main goal being to make sci-
ence understandable and entertaining
at the same time.
After we decided to host a Science
Slam, I thought to myself, “OK, why
not give it a go?” and gave my first Sci-
ence Slam talk. Making science under-
standable to people who are not from
your field is a really important point
because we often live in our own “sci-
entific bubble”. Not everyone shares
the same knowledge, and even simple
things can be very inspiring to people
who never heard about them before.
Just try to remember how excited you
were when you first started to study
your topic. Why not spread this pas-
sion, this enthusiasm you also expe-
rienced before? Standing in front of
people and explaining science is also in
a way necessary to find clarity for one-
self: Why am I doing this? And what is
it worth?
tration. One of the greatest moments
is if you can actually spread your en-
thusiasm about your own research
to the person listening to you; it does
not matter whether it is one person or
hundreds of people. These moments
also give you some feedback which
motivates you to find out more about
your research.
I once had the opportunity to attend
a professional BBC media training
course. It was the prize for winning
the German FameLab competition
(britishcouncil.de/en/famelab). Other
competitions, such as FallingWalls
(falling-walls.com/lab/apply), also re-
ward you with such training. There
are also courses you can book to get
professional science communication
training. For example, via mediomix.
de, Dr. Dennis Fink, who was a former
MPI PhD student and founded his own
company after finishing his PhD, offers
a variety of different courses. Apart
from that, the most important thing to
learn how to communicate science is
practice, practice, practice!
In the past, there have been critical
remarks [1,2] as to whether “true”
science can be transmitted within
3 to 10 minutes and whether the
competitive character of Science
Slams causes entertainment to be
given priority over accuracy. How do
you react to the criticism that the role
of entertainment is too important in
Science Slams?
It is true that a lot of Science Slam talks
focus on entertainment. It is also true
that you can never explain all of your
research in just a few minutes. If you
start thoroughly, then just explaining
the most basic concepts would al-
ready take you more than 10 minutes.
But that is not the point of a Science
Slam talk. In my opinion, the most
important part is evoking interest for
science, making people curious about
that research. For this, entertainment
is a powerful tool. I think it is a great
success if at least a few people go
home and think positively about your
research, and start googling it or go to
Wikipedia because they became curi-
ous. In this way, you allowed people
to gain new knowledge. So, it is okay
if Science Slams are entertaining, as
long as they contain some facts about
science. They can still open a door to
laypeople who were not particularly
interested in science, to people who
would not really read science books, or
go to public lectures.
Why should researchers engage in
communicating science on stage?
It does not necessarily need to be “on
stage”, but I think it is very important
to communicate science to a broad
public. First, because most basic re-
search projects are supported by tax-
payers’ money and the public has a
basic right to know what the results
of these research projects are. Sec-
ond, because science and scientific
findings have a huge impact on soci-
ety, implications of scientific findings
should also be openly discussed with
the society. Third, because “miscom-
munication” about science can be very
You seem to be rather successful in
communicating your research on
stage to a broad audience – where
did you gain these skills?
I like talking to people – I know that
I sometimes talk too much as well…
*HAHA* – and then people usually
ask: “What do you do?”, “What is your
research about?”. Those moments
are actually the perfect ones to prac-
tice communicating your research on
a bigger stage. With time, you realize
which parts of your research are inter-
esting to other people and which parts
make them sleepy and lose concen-
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