I have not posted a blog for three months, but I have presented my research to five different audiences in that time. It’s been busy – and instructive.

My first audience included colleagues from various departments and disciplines across the University at an event to share research on ‘Behaviour and the Environment’. I focused first on my previous project, Park and Charge Oxfordshire, and results from a Stated Choice experiment on parking and charging preferences and the behavioural questions of EV adoption. I concluded with a short summary of my current research project, ITEM: Inclusive Transition to Electric Mobility, which partially questions the behavioural choice perspective on the transition.

My second audience were part-time students on a continuing education Masters. As the seminar was due to last 90 minutes, I started preparing those slides first, so I’d have plenty of material from which to develop my other presentations. I was still updating them the day before, adding extra slides in case I needed them to fill the time. I agreed to answer questions as I went along, and barely got through all the material I had originally included, never mind the extra.

My third audience was our research participants: policymakers and stakeholders, many of whom I’d interviewed as part of the research data collected to analyse the policy perspective. The presentation parts of the workshop had to be quick, to give plenty of time for moderate structured discussions that still felt almost too short.

My fourth audience was at a professional conference attended mainly by transport practitioners from the public and private sector. I wrote a conference paper, which I knew said all I wanted it to. That was to be circulated after the event, but on the day itself, I spoke at 5:30pm in one of five parallel sessions. The last presenter in the last session of a long day. We were all a bit tired!

My fifth and final audience was at an academic conference, where I presented at the end of the first session, 10am, on the last day. With all the previous presentations under my belt, I was no longer making last minute changes to my slides, I kept to time and received useful feedback for the comparative academic paper I am currently drafting on the policy perspective.

All these presentations took a lot of work, as there are not as many economies of scale as you might think in presenting the same work multiple times, if you are doing so for diverse audiences in a variety of formats. The process was, however, instructive and gave me new insights into both how to present my work and the work itself.

For example, the internal academic audience taught me the value of making connections between past and future work.

The teaching taught me to always build in a wide range of audience participation time if you are planning on taking questions as you go along. You never know how engaged your audience will be or which material will draw comment.

At the workshop, my presentation wasn’t as important as the distillation of some of the findings into statements and activities to facilitate discussion. The research participants gave us insights not only into our analysis of the electric mobility transition in Bristol, but also into wider issues and interactions with other places and other research.

Session assignment at a conference is not within a presenter’s control, but once the programme is announced, it is important to think not only about who you are presenting to, but also when. Nobody is likely to be full of energy and enthusiasm in the late afternoon, so I should probably have aimed for less, but more catchy content.

Finally, I found that a little bit of academic theory, if explained briefly and simply, enhanced the more practical points in my presentation. That’s academic expertise at its best, and could well have done the same for some of my presentations to non-academic audiences!