Going Public: Out of the Ivory Tower

Yesterday, I attended and was part of a timely all day workshop at the University of Washington Allen Library Research Commons, “Going Public: Sharing Research Beyond the Academy.” It was sponsored by the UW Libraries, College of the Environment, eScience Institute, and the Simpson Center for the Humanities/Public Scholarship program. Timely, of course, since science, climate change facts/efforts, the humanities (and arts), and even higher education in general are all under increasing attack in the United States.

The opening keynote speaker was Scott Montgomery, a geoscientist and lecturer in the UW Jackson School of International Studies and author of numerous books, including The Chicago Guide to Communicating Science (University of Chicago, 2003). For his talk, titled “A Story in 25 Images,” he practiced what he preaches by using PPT for showing a series of images to accompany a story (with a traditional narrative arc) of his journey as a communicator of science. Most of his images were abstract geology sorts of themes, but the ones that included human images portrayed only white men in suits. Yes, I was wearing my critical feminist academic bonnet, and yes, there were many women and persons of color in the audience. One young female attendee pointed out in the Q&A session that women within the academy face significant barriers, not just to entering science fields, but also to have non-traditional, public-facing and public-engaging scholarly work—barriers faced by men as well but to a lesser degree. And this is not only a gendered, but also a “minoritized” (her term and one that I like) issue.

The middle part of the day’s workshop consisted of panel discussions and break-out sessions focused on various issues of working with the media in all its varied forms—from TV and newspapers to podcasts, blogging, and other types of social media. I moderated a lunchtime round table discussion on academic freedom and public scholarship, two overlapping topics close to my heart. I didn’t share this in the session, but I have had to fight to defend my academic freedom in terms of this blog over its now seven year history. And public scholarship, such as what I do in my work on health and homelessness? It would seem that it is not deemed “nursing science,” whatever that term even means. But hopefully that is a cohort effect that will change for the better.

I was part of the final panel, “Navigating the Path from Research to Public Policy,” along with Dr. Simone Alin from UW Oceanography and NOAA; Washington State Senator Rueven Carlyle; Sally Clark, former Seattle City Councilmember and current Director, Regional and Community Relations, External Affairs at UW; and Tim Thomas, with the Urban@UW Homeless Initiative. The moderator’s question to the three of us panelists who are researchers was, “Can you tell us a little about how you’ve been involved in informing policy-making through your research.” Indeed, I can and I did, including a mention of my medical memoir, Catching Homelessness: A Nurse’s Story of Falling Through the Safety Net, which is research-informed and is written as a policy narrative—policy narrative being defined as ” a new genre of writing that explores health policy through the expression of personal experiences” by the editors of the Narrative Matters section of the health policy academic journal Health Affairs. Narrative Matters needs better inclusion from nurse writers, but that is another story for another day.