Storytelling Strategies for Research Communication

What the event will cover

Practical storytelling strategies are vital for communicating research in story form. Participants will learn an orientation to storytelling that centers cultural humility while leveraging storytelling dynamics based in a longstanding tradition of professional storytelling.

You will learn techniques of story construction based on three classic narrative structures, with roots in folklore and narratology, that together provide a road map for weaving together information and emotion. You will learn a specific series of steps for practicing and refining stories with live audiences to develop their potential for impact. Finally, you will build confidence in transforming their ability to recognize a good story into skills for crafting a meaningful and memorable research story.

About the speakers

Dr. Kate McDowell focuses on storytelling as information research, social justice storytelling, and how the history of library storytelling can enhance contemporary data storytelling. Her writing appears in Library Quarterly, College and Research Libraries, and JASIST, where her article Storytelling wisdom: Story, information, and DIKW theorizes storytelling as a fundamental information form. She advises regional, national, and international nonprofits, including work with the World Health Organization on storytelling responses to online health misinformation. McDowell leads the nationally-funded Data Storytelling Toolkit for Librarians, currently in development to equip public libraries with the narrative tools they need to thrive in the data-driven era. McDowell is an associate professor at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA. Her teaching on both storytelling and data storytelling was internationally celebrated with the ASIS&T Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award in 2022. 

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