Outcome

Introductory session

Our course on Storytelling and Science Communication at VU Amsterdam kicked off on October 17, with 10 students across the Bachelor's, Master's, and PhD levels!

Raffaella Mulas opened the session by sharing her experiences with storytelling and science communication, and what she has learned from them. She also proposed a first warm-up writing exercise.

After that, Mar Curcó Iranzo gave a talk about outreach activities in the Netherlands, using slides that were kindly provided by Nicos Starreveld. We ended with an improv theatre session led by Alessandro Zocca, full of fun and creative exercises!

Mathematics communication workshop – Katie Steckles

This was the only online workshop of our course, but despite that, Katie kept everyone's attention for three hours and made the time fly. By combining practical tips on science communication with engaging, hands-on activities, she made the session inspiring and dynamic.

At the end, several students shared a three-minute pitch, and it was so nice to see how many promising directions they are already taking for their final theater performance in December!

In the photo: one of the students is reading her draft out loud with a timer, in the room where half of the group decided to join the Zoom session together.

Mathematics communication workshop – Ekaterina Eremenko

Ekaterina led a truly inspiring session, alternating stories from her own very unique path with interactive exercises that invited the students to talk in pairs and dig deeper and deeper into each other's stories.

She also shared moving clips from her documentaries featuring some of the most renowned mathematicians of our time, including Louis Nirenberg, John Nash, Andrew Wiles, and Cédric Villani, offering a rare glimpse into their personalities.

At the end of the workshop, Ekaterina beautifully captured the spirit of the course, describing it as "a garden, where the flowers are the students' stories, which are starting to grow and reveal themselves."