From school teacher, to science communicator, to events producer, and now researcher, Isabelle Kingsley has spent her career spanning widely different areas of science education and outreach. She founded the Sydney Science Festival in 2015 which has grown into an annual festival attended by over 80,000 people. While she was running the Sydney Science Festival she began to wonder what sort of educational impact public science events actually have.

This inspired her to undertake her PhD at the University of New South Wales where she is developing methods to quantify what people actually learn from public science events. Despite the proliferation of science communication and outreach across the world we actually don’t know how effective these initiatives are at increasing science literacy and comprehension. Isabelle’s work will help improve the efforts of science communicators and educators and help make science engagement more effective into the future.

Visit Isabelle’s website to find out more or follow her research and outreach journey on Twitter and Instagram @isabellekingsley

Music: ‘Strange Stuff’ by Sonic Wallpaper – www.sonicwallpaper.bandcamp.com