Reflecting on the Communication of Scientific Ocean Drilling 

Will Grant

• Scientific ocean drilling represents a landmark achievement in international collaborative science, bringing a wide range of countries together to understand more about our planet’s history and functioning. But this work has not achieved broad social awareness, and the international waters that have brought this program together over the last few decades are getting choppy.
• Will Grant travelled aboard the DV Chikyu as part of IODP Expedition 405 to explore how ocean drilling scientists communicate their mission.
• Key findings suggest a complex communication challenge for the field, including addressing tricky societal desires for earthquake forecasting, the dual use dilemma of the field, and an unclear orienting mission. 
   

HANDS-ON CLIMATE CONNECTIONS

Graham Walker

• Hands-on and demonstration-based methods are used heavily in STEM education and science centres, but often overlooked in science communication more broadly.
• This research aims to unlock the power of tangible, physical mediums to communicate climate and energy issues. As part of the research, youth – a critical but marginalised actor in climate and energy issues – are using drawings to express their aspirations and concerns for how we make and use energy.

• Interactive science shows and hands-on workshops are being investigated as not only tools to communicate core ideas, but also lean into emotional and motivational dimensions with the aim of supporting agency for action.

   

Re-imagining Science Communication: The Role of Cultural Humility in Ethical Practices 

Faranak Hardcastle, Fabien Medvecky, Sujatha Raman, Graham Walker

• Science communication is often called “good” when it is clear, factual, or participatory. Yet we rarely ask: good for whom, and who decides?
• Models of knowledge exchange and cultural practice have broadened the field, but they can still reproduce inequities when assumptions about audiences and expertise go unexamined.
• This paper proposes cultural humility as a critical lens for rethinking what “good” science communication means in practice. Rather than a new checklist, cultural humility offers a way to unpack how “the good” is imagined, negotiated, and enacted. It also turns the mirror inward to help communicators question which voices, skills, and styles are legitimised as “good,” and which remain unseen.