Meeting at a different crossroads: when Science, Foreign Language Teaching and University Public Engagement converge

According to the NCCPE, Public Engagement entails the many ways in which the activity and benefits of higher education and research can be shared with the general public in an interactive two-way process with the aim of generating mutual benefit. In Italy this is defined ‘Third mission’, since it adds to the two primary missions of universities, i.e. education and research. The highlight of this is the European Researchers’ Night, an event which takes place every year in September to bring researchers and citizens closer together and promote the sharing of ideas and research in a variety of informative ways. For the 2021 edition a Physics professor at Parma University chose to explore the theme of Gender Gap in STEM, and was interested to know how STEM doctoral students felt about the issue. The physicist decided to transform the topic into a unique opportunity for these students to critically investigate through English an issue which is distant from the ones which they daily deal with in their research: the lingua franca of science was therefore to take on a whole new role and become the language of opinion, discussion and reflection. This different way of engaging with the Third Mission gave rise to a collaboration between the scientist and the EAP teacher, who together devised a session which would stimulate the students’ interest and provide food for thought for the Public Engagement event with the production of a presentation and posters. The talk will describe the session’s ‘lesson plan’, the language and soft skills triggered, and the outcome of the whole experience for all the people involved, with a view to developing this initial experience into a closer, more structured interaction between L2-teaching, non-linguistic subjects and Public Engagement.