Research Posters

Developing content

One of the first questions you are asked at any conference or networking event is often one of the hardest to answer:

"Tell me a bit about your research…"

This can be a tricky question to answer, as the more involved you become in your project, the harder it gets to explain your work in a nutshell. We've found the following activity helpful in the past at getting to the heart of our own research projects, and in figuring out what the key information is for a non-specialist audience:

Narrowing down the content

It is likely that your dissertation or research project will have multiple objectives and strands, particularly as you begin to analyse your data and offer different interpretations and explanations for any patterns or findings you have uncovered. Your poster should have a single, cohesive narrative that the reader can follow from start to finish. This may mean sacrificing some elements of your work for the sake of clarity - perhaps presenting on just one of your research aims or trends from your data set, rather than the project in its entirety.

Find alternative ways of communicating these ideas - you could include a bullet point in the 'conclusions/future research' section of the poster, or make part of your verbal presentation when networking or speaking to attendees about your work.