The Public Engagement with Research team is proud to have supported Exeter’s contribution to Pint of Science 2025, an international initiative bringing cutting-edge research to new audiences in local pubs. Dr Harry Green, coordinator for Exeter’s events, shares his experience delivering this year’s festival and continuing to build on its success.
This year, I had the privilege of running Pint of Science for Exeter. Pint of Science is a public engagement event that aims to bring research being done at Exeter to new audiences – and there’s no place more public than a pub! Each night had three talks on research taking place in Exeter, which, with events on three nights and concurrently at three venues, gave us 27 talks with over 400 people attending in total.
My role as city coordinator is to make sure the event runs smoothly: starting with building a team to support the events, finding speakers, managing advertisements, and – most importantly – booking venues. It’s not Pint of Science without the pints, and this year, the Bootlegger, City Gate Hotel and the White Hart Hotel were excellent host venues.
We had a real mix of events and activities. In Robots Battling Cancer, Prof. Yang Liu’s team brought a practical demonstration of robotics, and in Unravelling the Mind: Neurodegeneration and Beyond, Chloe Wang brought along the 3D VR goggles she uses in her research for audiences to try. We also learned why some animals can regrow a head (and why you can’t!) and the exciting future of stem cells in diabetes treatment.
None of this would have happened without the fantastic team of staff and students helping to organise the event. I’m especially grateful to first year PhD student Keira Evans for her leadership on the Beautiful Mind theme and second year PhD student Jingzhan Lu for recruiting an entire team for the Tech Me Out and Planet Earth nights.
Although I’ve been involved with Pint of Science since 2017, this was my first year running it. We had great representation from the medical school and biosciences, but I’d love to get more researchers from physics, maths and computing involved. I’ve learned a lot about events management and next year I’m excited to plan a new team structure that can help make Pint of Science, bigger, better, and more diverse than ever before!