‘Embrace the act of translation’: Kim Shillinglaw delivers annual Campaign for Science and Engineering lecture at University’s Regent Street Cinema

Shillinglaw is the former controller of BBC Two and BBC Four and the former Head of the Corporation’s Commissioning for Science and Natural History. She commissioned a diverse range of science-based programmes such as Blue Planet II and was the architect of the BBC’s Year of Science campaign. 

She underlined the massive potential a greater promotion of science could have on the country’s economy. Public engagement in science, she said, was key in increasing and diversifying skills in the UK’s workforce, helping to drive the economy forward and solve some of the key issues the country faces. 
She explained why increasing investment in the sciences is difficult. Investment in research and innovation, where governments channel money towards scientific research, often takes a long time to see results, she asserted. This makes it harder for politicians, who are elected on a relatively short-term basis, to champion science investment. “The more science investment rises,” Shillinglaw said, “the more the question will be asked: why?”. 

Shillinglaw argued that bringing science into the public’s consciousness was key to underlining its value and making investment in science an easier choice. Shillinglaw paid tribute to the work universities had done in showing the impact of their research through the Research Excellence Framework, as well as praising science festivals and television shows like Big Bang Theory for bringing science into people’s everyday lives. 
 

To emphasise the importance of science to the public, Shillinglaw said it was important to go beyond awe and wonder as the mode of engagement. Research and innovation, she said, should be aligned to solid outcomes. It was also important, she argued, to put science into public spaces as much as possible. She urged scientists to “embrace the act of translation[…] now more than ever we need to make engagement key to our strategies[…] it’s a non-negotiable that scientists should be taught basic communication skills.” 

She also noted the importance of representation in popular science programmes, saying that it is important for people to see people they can relate to on television. “Women and people from disadvantaged backgrounds that are exposed to innovators who they can relate to are more likely to become innovators themselves.” Shillinglaw also explained the current science inequity across the United Kingdom, with people in some regions much less likely to encounter science in their day to day lives.

Guests at the lecture were greeted in Regent Street Cinema with a number of posters from CASE which exemplified how important scientific research could be communicated to the public. 
The lecture, sponsored by Advanced Research Clusters (ARC) and Elsevier, was followed by a question-and-answer session and a drinks reception.

Find out more about research and innovation at Westminster.