Graduate School
Communicating Research
Members of the Brown community are committed to taking the knowledge they gain in classrooms, laboratories and libraries to further the public good, and using it to address the world’s most pressing and complex challenges. To do this most effectively, students must be able to translate the importance of their research to many different audiences, including specialists in their fields and the public.
Communicating Research
Members of the Brown community are committed to taking the knowledge they gain in classrooms, laboratories and libraries to further the public good, and using it to address the world’s most pressing and complex challenges. To do this most effectively, students must be able to translate the importance of their research to many different audiences, including specialists in their fields and the public.
Graduate School Programs
The Graduate School helps students build communication and presentation skills through a summer writing retreat, a workshop introducing participants to performance techniques used by professional actors and an annual event showcasing student work and experiences through carefully prepared five-minute presentations.
Effective Performance is a series of workshops that helps students build foundational skills in communicating research. These workshops are taught by professional actors, who give students instruction in communicating, improvising and responding dynamically to an audience. Sessions focus on some of the foundational aspects of communicating and presenting.
Research Matters, hosted by the Graduate School, is a live event, featuring short talks by graduate students on why their research matters. These brief talks showcase exceptional graduate student scholarship and celebrate their ideas.
Campus Partner Programs
Doctoral students have access to a variety of programs supporting student writing and communication, including the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning, the Sheridan Center’s Writing Center, the Division of Research communication team and a network of communicators across campus.
The Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning offers a suite of services, including graduate student pre-orientation, workshops, conversation programs and individual language support, to assist students whose primary language is not English. International and multilingual students are encouraged to take advantage of these supports to enhance any aspect of their English use or cross-cultural communication.
The Writing Center, part of the Sheridan Center, hosts several graduate writing communities, such as a dissertation writing retreat, designed to provide structured, communal writing support to graduate students.
Brown’s campus is home to more than 100 professional communicators who bring expertise ranging from reporting, writing and news media outreach, to social media, marketing strategy, web and digital communications, photography, videography and more. Together, those communicators — who are embedded in academic and administrative units across the University — help to tell the Brown research story.
The Writing Center, part of the Sheridan Center, provides individual and group writing support free of charge to any member of the Brown community. Writing Center associates assist students with all stages of the writing process, from finding a topic through drafting, revising and final editing.