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Institute of Advanced Study

Accolade Research Exchange Events

About

The IAS hosts termly Accolade Research Exchange Events on a Wednesday afternoon in the IAS Seminar room and online. This is a great opportunity for new and current fellows of the institute to share their work and network with the IAS community. It's also a place for fellows to practice communicating their findings and receive feedback from a non-specialist, diverse and interdisciplinary audience in preparation for those important job pitch presentations.

How to Participate

Every fellow at the IAS is invited to present their work at one of these research exchange events. If you're a postdoc at Warwick, you can take part by joining IAS as an Associate Fellow or you can view our Early Career Funding pageLink opens in a new window for more opportunities.

15 Minute presentation guidelines

The Purpose: As researchers, we are well versed at communicating with researchers in our own discipline at departmental events and research-area specific conferences. Communicating the essence of our research to academics from entirely different disciplines is an altogether different challenge.

  • New interdisciplinary collaborations could be formed by effectively communicating different research projects to a wide audience.
  • Being able to promote the core of your research in an easy to understand manner will be of great use in future interviews, presentations and conversation.

The Presentation: You will give a 20-minute presentation about your research, suitable to an academic but non-expert audience. The aim of this presentation is to give you a chance to practice your job pitch presentation, often asked for when applying to new institutions for academic positions. The presentation will conclude with a short Q&A

  1. This presentation can concern a broad overview of your work, or an in-depth study of a particular aspect.
  2. Keep use of jargon to a minimum so as to not alienate those from different disciplines to yourself.
  3. Think creatively about the presentation of your ideas and how you can best use the space; visualising your work through illustrative slides, using digital tools to increase engagement or facilitating a short task with your audience to exemplify a critical idea.
  4. Be mindful of time keeping. The chair may ask you to stop speaking at 15 minutes, regardless of whether you have completed your presentation.
  5. Be natural, and passionate if that is a natural state for you.
  6. Take feedback on the chin and don’t be defensive. The reason why someone is being critical is because they care at some level.