Wiebke Rössig led a workshop on participation in research and debate at the Oxford Summer School "Open, transparent, and reproducible research in the life sciences" in August 2018. Subsequently, one workshop participant wished to apply the discussed approaches of participatory and dialogical communication in museums. After an exchange on how questions could be posed that offer the PhD student added value in their research, these questions were printed on posters. The PhD student then proactively approached visitors with these questions, briefly explained her project and then immediately came to the questions in which she was interested in the different perspectives of the visitors. In addition, moderation cards were available so that visitors could stick their opinions on prepared poster walls. Visitors enthusiastically took the opportunity to talk to a young scientist. Several long and intensive discussions developed, even leading to the development of research questions. The PhD student wrote in her evaluation: "I think the first thing to note was that the entire concept was pretty new to me! Usually there are two main ways that we might interact with the general public; recruiting them as participants, or 'communicating' our research after it has been completed. So for me I think one of the best aspects was actually being introduced to the participation framework and I hope to be able to incorporate it more into future research or other work. As for the actual experience on the day - I was pleasantly surprised at how some people did want to interact (I suppose I feared no one would want to talk to me or care about the topic)."
