Question: why are you stand up comedian and scientist

Senga Robertson answered on 6 Nov 2017:

Hi Zay Zay

that’s a great question!

I used to be really nervous about giving talks about my science to big groups of people, and unfortunately for me that’s something you need to do quite a lot as a scientist. I went on a course at university that was aimed at helping people feel more confident speaking to groups of people by training them to do stand up comedy. They say if you can do stand up comedy then any other public speaking will seem easy!

Anyway, I did the course and it turns out people think I’m pretty funny so they asked me to take part in something called Bright Club which is a stand up comedy show where University PhD students and teachers tell a big group of people about some of the funny things that happen in their research. I decided to be brave and give it a try and I actually REALLY loved it. It was brilliant to tell people about my work without having to be serious. People thought I was really funny and so the organisers of Bright Club have asked me to come back a few times and do some more stand up comedy. I’m actually doing a show in December which I’m really looking forward to. I’m really not a serious person, I make jokes a lot and see the silly side of things a lot too which can be a bit inappropriate in some science situation so it’s really good to just be myself on the stage and to make people laugh.

Senga 🙂