Edinburgh Napier University

  The project consists in the organisation and delivery of a one-day workshop on research impact aimed at PhD students from arts and humanities subjects across Scottish universities. The idea is to teach participants how to use multimedia tools and digital communications techniques to build their online brand and enhance the impact of their research with wider communities in academia and beyond. The event will be entitled: PhD Blogging for Beginners: A Bootcamp of Multimedia Content Production to Increase Your Research Impact, and funded through the Cohort Development Fund scheme (CDF) of the Scottish Graduate School for the Arts and Huminites (SGSAH), which is focussed on the provision of doctoral training in the arts and huminites in Scotland via collaborative projects.

Research visibility is one of the most critical aspects of PhD work, and this one-day hands-on workshop will teach PhD students how to identify and employ a range of digital tools and communication techniques to build their online presence, promote their research, gain visibility, and engage with the public. Through demonstrations and practical activities, participants will learn how to set up their own blog professionally, write for the web, and create striking posts about their research containing multimedia elements such as photo stories, photo slideshows, videos, infographics, GIFs, story maps and polls.

The workshop will be held in early September at Glasgow’s Kelvin Hall, within the premises of the National Library of Scotland (SGSAH's and Edinburgh Napier’s partner organisation) and led by Dr Ivana Ebel, digital communications specialist and associate professor in journalism at Edinburgh Napier University, with the support of SGSAH-funded researchers from Edinburgh Napier, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Strathclyde.