How to break out of the specialist mindset and get better at science communication

Hannah Booth
Feb 5
3 min read

One of the hardest aspects of science communication is breaking out of the specialist mindset. As researchers we spend most of our time communicating with trusted colleagues and fellow experts in our niche area — interactions where we feel very much at home. These conversations are a large part of what make a career in research so enjoyable, though there's always the risk that we get too comfortable. For those times when we want our research to reach people beyond our immediate subject area, the specialist mindset we're so familiar with can actually hold us back.

To get better at communicating our work to broader audiences, we need to be able to switch easily between this specialist mindset and a generalist mindset — approaching our research from multiple angles and finding connections between different perspectives. Getting used to this way of thinking in turn helps us translate our complex research into accessible, relatable stories which will speak to people beyond our specific subject area.

Below are some simple habits that can help us break out of the specialist mindset and get better at science communication.

A seesaw balancing one big green ball with three little green balls — Photo by Dawid Zawiła on Unsplash

1 | Stay curious about the world

Make a habit of regularly reading, watching and listening to things outside your immediate research area. This may feel like wasted time that would be better spent catching up on developments in your own field, but you'll probably come to hear about those sooner or later anyway. Instead, try to deliberately expose yourself to new ideas and disciplines outside your natural orbit. This helps train the generalist mindset and can also open up new ways of thinking about how your own work fits into the wider world.

2 | Start thinking in terms of questions

A generalist approach typically involves asking lots of questions. What is interesting about this? What's obvious here? What isn't? How does this relate to what I already know? What else do I need to find out? Try to get into this question-led way of engaging with new information in your everyday life — whilst reading the news, listening to podcasts or doing anything where you're encountering unfamiliar ideas. Training this way of thinking will in turn give you a fresh way to approach your own work as a generalist would.

3 | Connect with older versions of yourself

There will have been a time when you weren't devoting the majority of your waking hours to your research — before the PhD, before the MA or BA. These older versions of ourselves can often feel very faraway, but remembering a time when you were still a generalist yourself — with your attention spread across many different interests and areas at once — can help you find an intuitive way back to the generalist mindset that is personal to you.

4 | Deliberately seek out different opinions to your own

Make a point of trying to engage with ways of thinking that differ from your own. This can be within your own field, for example connecting with researchers from other schools of thought or methodological backgrounds. Regularly reaching "across the aisle" in this way can help you realise what you've been taking for granted, which is a key step towards unlocking a more generalist mindset.

5 | Get comfortable with partial understanding

As a researcher, you're used to being the expert, and that can make it hard to accept situations where you don't and indeed can't know everything. Getting comfortable with having a partial understanding of lots of different things is tricky, but something you can practice. When exploring new topics and ideas, try to resist the urge to master everything about them, and instead focus on what you need to know in order to make sense of the bigger picture. Over time, this will become second nature and make it easier to break out of the specialist mindset.

I hope you found this post useful!

I'm Hannah, a former academic in linguistics, and in my work at Smart Phrasing I help researchers communicate their work with confidence, clarity and impact, so their ideas and discoveries reach the people who most need to hear them.