On 29 April 2026, students participating in the LDE Thesis Labs came together at Spui in Den Haag for Bootcamp Day: 21st Century Skills. The day was dedicated to two competencies that are increasingly recognised as essential to impactful research: science communication through storytelling, and civic engagement as a dimension of academic practice.
Storytelling for science: Translating research for broader audiences
The morning session was led by Dr. Cristiana Strava, Assistant Professor at Leiden University and social anthropologist whose fieldwork spans North, West, and East Africa. Her research engages with informal housing, gendered forms of labour, marginalization, and the politics of planning and development regimes. That deep, lived knowledge is precisely what she brings to her approach to science communication.
As researcher Brené Brown puts it: "Stories are just data with a soul." That framing set the tone for the session. Dr. Strava challenged students to think about how to translate academic research into something that people outside academia will actually listen to - and feel. Students explored the building blocks of a good story - character, point of view, plot, setting, and conflict - and reflected on how the choice of medium shapes the way a message lands with its audience. The session also touched on the ethical dimensions of science communication, emphasising the importance of working with and listening to local communities.
To put these principles into practice, students worked in their lab groups to develop storyboards, a technique widely used in film, journalism, and media. It was a hands-on exercise in making research more relatable - without sacrificing its depth.
Inner Development Goals & Civic Engagement
The afternoon session was facilitated by Esther van der Ent, Programme Manager of the LDE Thesis Labs. The workshop introduced the Inner Development Goals - a framework designed to complement the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by attending to the personal capacities needed to tackle complex societal challenges - and explored civic engagement as it relates to thesis research.
Students reflected on their personal values and the role they want to play in the world. Discussions examined what civic engagement looks like in practice, both individually and collectively, and how a sense of civic responsibility can enrich research. The guiding questions of the session - what kind of change do you want to see, and what role do you want to play in it? - invited students to see themselves not only as researchers, but as engaged members of the communities their work seeks to serve.
Conclusion
The Bootcamp Day reflects a core commitment of the LDE Thesis Labs: to develop researchers who are equipped not only with disciplinary knowledge, but with the communicative and civic capacities that meaningful, transdisciplinary research requires. Developing researchers who can communicate their work with clarity and engage meaningfully with society is exactly what the programme is built around. Yesterday was a great example of that in practice.
