Talk2Geo: Hablemos de Geociencias, a geoscience outreach project

Engaging the community with geosciences has always been a big challenge for geoscientists. It has become increasingly important in the face of widespread misinformation on social media. To address this, the “Talk2Geo: Hablemos de Geociencias (Let’s talk about geoscience)” project was created to bridge the gap between geoscientists and the general public in an informal and approachable setting, where people don’t feel afraid or ashamed to asks questions.

We dropped the traditional structure of the academia and took researchers from the Universidad de Concepción away from the university, to a local restobar. There, through the course of the first semester of 2024, we organized six conservatories. Scientist were asked to present a brief introduction to their research topic in a non-scientific, everyday language. The audience was encouraged to ask questions and engage in discussions throughout the talks. These interactions often guided the development of the topics, fostering an open and dynamic dialogue. The addressed themes were stratigraphy, hydrothermal waters, volcanoes, field geology, earthquakes and landslides.

The talks had a great reception from the public, who participated actively and asked abundant questions. We compiled these questions and general topics of interest about each of the themes and presented the results to academics at the university, not only to bring sciences to the public but to also bring peoples interests to academics, hoping to have an impact in the development of future research topics.