The 3rd edition of the Workshop of Scientific Evolutionary Writing was held at the Albert Einstein Center for Fundamental Physics in Bern from January 14 to January 16, 2020.
Scientific research is about resolving mysteries, overcoming obstacles or solving problems. These features lend themselves to interesting stories with great narrative potential. And yet, many scientific papers lack basic storytelling mechanisms. The aim of this workshop was to explore storytelling techniques and how they can be used in scientific papers while maintaining the scientific rigour required by the world’s top journals. Participants were challenged to embark on a journey that is an evolutionary process fuelled by their own creations. They rewrote and refined their text until the point at which it “could only be worsened”.
SEW COORDINATORS
Vittorio Loreto ( Sony CSL Paris, Sapienza University of Rome and CSHV)
Vittoria Colizza (INSERM)
TEACHERS
Mark Buchanan is a physicist and science writer based in Europe. He is a former editor with the international science journal Nature and also New Scientist. He is the author of three books and numerous articles exploring the ideas of modern physics. He writes occasionally for the New York Times and has a monthly column in Nature Physics.
Justin Mullins is a consultant editor at New Scientist where he has covered topics ranging from Chernobyl to the emergence of artificial intelligence. He was New Scientist’s San Francisco bureau chief during the first dotcom boom and later its Boston Editor and Technology Editor. He is a former teaching fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.
SEW COLLABORATORS
Elisabetta Falivene (Sapienza Università di Roma); Martina Galletti (Sony CSL Paris); Pietro Gravino (Sony CSL Paris); Ruggiero Lo Sardo (Sony CSL Paris); Remi Van Trijp (Sony CSL Paris).
LOCAL ORGANISERS
Gilberto Colangelo (University of Bern and Albert Einstein Center).
More info about the workshop of Scientific Evolutionary Writing in Bern:
http://sew-workshop.org/berna_2020/
Are you curious about Scientific Evolutionary Writing?
Watch this video about our first SEW workshop.