What Happens When Researchers Stop Presenting and Start Storytelling? 

As academics, we’re trained to write for our peers, to value precision over accessibility. But what happens when we need to communicate beyond academia? This question led us to experiment with storytelling as a methodology for a recent workshop with HeatNexus researchers, who are all working to address the health impacts of extreme heat.

Stories are humanity’s oldest way of sharing knowledge. They engage emotion and intellect, making complex ideas or lessons memorable and meaningful. Telling a story not only makes research more accessible, it also amplifies impact. Policymakers remember stories when they’re making decisions. Community groups see themselves in narratives in ways they never do in academic papers. Funders invest in work that resonates emotionally as well as intellectually. Stories are the bridge between research and real-world change.

Moving from our heads to our hearts 

When researchers translate their work into narrative form, something remarkable happens: a study on heat adaptation becomes a story about a child who fainted at school and the teachers now learning to spot the early warning signs and symptoms, or a family who could finally sleep through hot nights, getting some much needed rest after their roof was painted with reflective coating.

The workshop session structure was intentionally intimate and informal. Participants were encouraged to identify a single story of change from their work, a zoomed-in moment, a particular experience, a turning point in their data or something unexpected. Crucially, these stories aimed to capture different types of change: instrumental changes like new policies or practices, conceptual shifts in how people understand an issue, capacity building within communities or organisations, or the strengthening of networks and relationships. This approach draws on the wheel of impact typology, recognising that research creates change through multiple pathways.

Before the stories began, we briefly reminded ourselves of how story selection, focusing on outcomes, experimenting with openings and human voice can make for distinctive and compelling narratives.

We sat in ‘storytelling circles’, reminiscent of story time at school, to listen to each other’s stories. Then each had the opportunity to give and receive peer feedback guided by prompts: “Did the story capture you and why?” “Was there enough, or too much detail?” “Did it answer the ‘so what’ question?”

This process moved researchers from focusing on results with their heads to connecting through their hearts. The emotive dimension that’s typically edited out of academic writing began to rise to the surface and one participant described the session as “emotional”.

Learning Through Multiple Lenses 

We heard about parts of each other’s projects rarely highlighted in traditional presentations, the small changes, the unexpected outcomes, the discoveries that emerged from failure. We learned about each other’s work in an entirely different way, deepening our understanding and providing new entry points for interdisciplinary learning. 

What’s more, the process of giving feedback on the way each story was told became its own learning opportunity. When you analyse someone else’s story, you’re simultaneously interpreting your own. The lens you apply to others inevitably turns back on yourself. 

By the workshop’s end, participants had begun to develop crucial capacities for communicating beyond academia, skills essential for translating research into real-world change. They had also experienced how storytelling dissolves disciplinary barriers and deepens collective understanding. More than that, they had discovered stories are tools for change. 

These are the stories that stick with people. These are the narratives that inspire action. Sometimes the best way forward is returning to our oldest form of knowledge sharing: a good story, well told.