Amazing research comes out of the Food from Thought (FfT) program with projects spanning everything from pollinators, vaccines and livestock health to watershed mapping, wetlands, insect diversity, and healthy soils. Supporting of all it is the FfT Program (see Figure 1). Inside the program is the Knowledge Mobilization team. And on that team: me!
Figure 1. An illustrated collage of agricultural scenes with FfT people interspersed throughout.
I’m Hope, the Knowledge Mobilization (KMb) Assistant for FfT, and a graduate student in Geography at the University of Guelph. As the KMb Assistant, I learn about FfT’s research landscape mostly through writing about it. In writing reports and articles, I am constantly learning about the research itself while at the same time developing my professional skills like written communication and knowledge synthesis. To synthesize or convey someone else’s expertise means that it needs to be well understood, well enough to identify and write on key components, impact, and results.
“An infographic can’t replace knowledge generated in research, but it can act as a visual complement, highlighting an important idea from the original work.”
There’s writing, and then there’s visual communication. Besides writing, I am sometimes tasked with creating infographics based on the work of a researcher. Infographics aim to convey a complex scientific idea or concept with few words and even less jargon. The process of distilling someone else’s academic expertise and packaging it into something that can be understood by non-experts can look like a bit like this (see Figure 2):
Figure 2. An artist paints a simplified scene in front of the famous painting, the Creation of Adam.
An infographic can’t replace knowledge generated in research, but it can act as a visual complement, highlighting an important idea from the original work.
To make an effective infographic, the why and who questions are important. There’s a million ways to tell a story, even in science communication. In choosing what story to tell about the research, it requires knowing the research well enough to have some options. It also requires knowing the audience – which FfT audience will be looking at this, and from what medium? It is also good to make something that can be used in other ways by the researcher too. So, we also consider what ideas would benefit most from a visual component, like a complex theory or process.
Usually, the process looks something like this (see Figure 3):
Figure 3. A visual flow-chart describing the process of developing an infographic.
I feel fortunate that in my role as KMb Assistant I am given the chance to strengthen both my written and visual communication skills while learning about amazing research happening at the University of Guelph. FfT is an inspiring place to work, both in terms of the research it centers and the team that works behind the scenes to uplift it. The team invests in the development of its students – not just student scholars, but student staff, and other students looking to develop their professional skills.
If you’re a graduate student reading this, or curious about learning how to capture an idea into an image, I highly recommend taking part in the upcoming workshop on Oct 29 – Skills for Research Impact: Infographics. Whether you’re new to this or have it down to a science, think about joining the Infographics in Practice program (Deadline Nov 1, 2024) to gain experience displaying knowledge you care about. Images speak and can be one of the most accessible ways to convey information – this applies to research and beyond. Science needs more art, and if you connect with both, think about how they can converge to tell meaningful science stories.
Read some more of Hope’s work and view her infographics on Food from Thought research in the following stories:
From Farm to Dead Zone: Saving the Biodiversity of the Great Lakes
Bee-yond Honeybees: Protecting Our Native Pollinators
