The Stempra committee is deeply saddened by the news of the death of our Chair, Rob Dawson, late last week. Rob was a dedicated and enthusiastic Chair who had led Stempra for the last three years and was always a pleasure to work with. He was an active member of the science press officer and …More
Photo by CDC on Unsplash A guest blog post by Sabina Alam (@Sab_Ra), Director of Publishing Ethics and Integrity, Taylor & Francis Group Nothing fosters collaboration like a global emergency, and this is the effect we’re experiencing with the COVID-19 pandemic too. Ethics approvals procedures for research studies at various institutions have been accelerated (e.g. …More
Nick Renaud-Komiya organised an informal conversation over Zoom for freelance STEMPRA members on Thursday 3 February. As freelance communication professionals, many of us have faced the last couple of years with limited interactions with freelance colleagues, so this proved a really rewarding way to informally swap notes and share our experiences. Here’s a taster of …More
In a joint event with the The Association of British Science Writers, Stempra members heard from cognitive neuroscientist Professor Gina Rippon, Katy Losse and statistician Simon White about a new project promoting accurate and responsible communication of research on sex, gender and the brain.Professor Rippon described herself as and an outspoken critic of ‘neurotrash’ — …More
Stempra has joined forces with ABSW (Association of British Science Writers) for the Dr Katharine Giles Award for the best popular article written by a scientist or engineer. The Dr Katharine Giles Award for the best popular article written by a scientist or engineer is an annual award, named in honour of a climate scientist …More
Press Officers during the Pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic has meant an unprecedented demand for science and health in the news media in 2020, but how did STEM press officers rise to this challenge? Expertly chaired by Rebecca Zeitin, a huge number of STEMPRA members virtually joined our ‘Press officers in the pandemic’ event which brought …More
Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash On 12 November, Stempra joined forces with the Healthcare Communications Association to look at the ingredients that make a successful communications partnership. Co-hosted by the HCA’s CEO Mike Dixon and Stempra Chair Rob Dawson, the event brought together a panel of five communications experts. Their experiences of partnerships ranged from intensive local …More
With WHO declaring an infodemic of false facts in the wake of COVID-19, our misinformation event aimed to give science communicators and press officer some useful tools to help combat the problem. Our first speaker was Dietram Scheufele, Taylor-Bascom Chair from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Morgridge Institute for Research. He started by questioning how …More
by Abigail Chard, Senior Consultant at Campus PR When an academic sends you through a paper on which she or he is main author, does your heart sink when you see a long list of collaborators from other institutions? If all institutions involved in the research want a namecheck, it can turn what is otherwise …More
STEMPRA goes virtual! With COVID-19 getting in the way of us all meeting in person, we’ve moved our events online – with the first on Monday 18 May with communications consultant Ruth Francis and Shane Canning, PR & media manager at the University of Edinburgh. Zooming in from all over the country we had a great …More