COACHING IN SCIENCE COMMUNICATION

Presenting the presenter:

Peter Spinks holds a master's degree in research psychology and has published in international academic journals. Since 1980, he has broadcast and written for leading media organisations, including the British Broadcasting Corporation, The Guardian (London) and The Observer (London) newspapers and New Scientist magazine.

Currently a senior staff journalist on a respected Australian newspaper, he has delivered successful science-communication workshops to prominent universities and research organisations around Australia (such as the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and the Australian Universities Quality Agency in Melbourne, the Bureaus of Meteorology in Sydney and Melbourne, the Co-operative Research Centre for Tropical Savannas at the Northern Territory University and the Environmental Research Institute for the Supervising Scientist in Darwin, the University of Western Australia and the Department of Conservation and Land Management in Perth, Central Queensland University in Rockhampton and the Australian Universities Quality Agency in Melbourne). He has also presented well-received workshops abroad, including one for the National Institute of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology in Trinidad (Caribbean) and another for the National Science Foundation in Sri Lanka.

Peter wrote the science journalism chapter for a major international textbook, Science Communication in Theory and Practice, (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001). He has also acted in an advisory capacity to the Oxford-based Social Issues Research Centre which, in partnership with the Amsterdam School of Communications Research, conducted the 12-month Messenger project funded by the European Union under the "Science and Society" section of the Sixth Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development.

Wizards of Oz, his book about recent breakthroughs by Australian scientists, has been twice the No.1 bestseller on New Scientist's list of top-selling science books. (For further information, please click here.)

LEFT AND BELOW: Workshop
presenter Peter Spinks addresses an annual conference in Western Australia.
PICTURES: JANA KOVAR