Like all good things the ‘Cup of Tea’ webinar series is over, and we discovered that like a good cup of tea and catch up with an old friend, it was never long enough to have a detailed conversation before the tea went cold! To remedy this, we are launching a new webinar series that will extend beyond half an hour and more fully explore a given topic, or, issue relating to research uptake.

We are excited to announce that on the last Thursday of every month we will be holding an ‘R2A Roundtable’ to further unpack the aspects of and lessons learned from applying different approaches to research uptake.

The virtual roundtable events will draw together a variety of contextual perspectives, approaches and development programmes to talk about the challenges and opportunities of communicating development research in 2017.  The year so far has been politically tumultuous for the international development sphere, with major elections, threatened budget revisions and countries widely talking about entering a post-truth era; whilst other countries are bucking the post-truth trend. These complex factors give rise to ever more questions about how development research can be successfully communicated to policymakers and practitioners across different countries.

The roundtables will aim to shed light on a particular project or programme’s approach, perspective on a problem, or successful outcome and will reflect on how the research uptake findings are applicable, or not, in other contexts. The roundtables with gather together a facilitator and a number of panellists to delve deeper into an issue, giving participants the chance to offer up their own experiences and challenge others to think about research uptake in a different way.

Each roundtable will last for an hour and consist of a five minute introduction by the facilitator, followed by short five minute presentations by panellists, and then, the floor will be opened for audience Q&A.

The webinars will be held on the last Thursday of every month, providing a useful moment of reflection on participants’ previous week of work and any associated uptake-related opportunities or challenges. The webinars will be recorded as audio and video files, and made accessible via R2A’s Youtube and Vimeo channels for those unable to participate on the day. The webinars will also be summarised in blog posts as a ‘quick read’, for those short of time and interested in the key messages.

Follow the hashtag #R2ARountable and join the conversation using social media.

The roundtables will explore three board themes: 1) planning for research uptake, 2) implementing uptake strategies and 3) monitoring, evaluating and learning from innovative approaches to uptake.

Dates and speakers:

Thursday 27 July: 14:00 BST, the C4D Network will speak about ‘Mapping the C4D Landscape’: key findings from the 2016/17 C4D Network Mapping Study.