A partnership with nonprofit publisher The Conversation has enabled West Virginia University researchers to help more than 10 million news readers better understand the news headlines and the issues affecting their lives. (WVU Graphic/Hunter Given)
Sharing their knowledge with global audiences, West Virginia University experts have reached more than 10 million news readers through a partnership with The Conversation U.S., a nonprofit, independent publisher of explanatory journalism.
Since signing on as one of the earliest partner higher education institutions in 2016, WVU has worked with The Conversation to connect faculty and doctoral researchers directly with the public in support of the University’s land-grant mission.
The Conversation makes scholarly knowledge available to everyone by driving the wide republication of its articles in platforms that range from CBS News and Yahoo! News to Popular Science and Smithsonian Magazine.
Some top republishers for stories by WVU researchers include Scientific American, PBS, Salon and Slate, as well as Actively Learn, a curriculum content company that brings the news into third through 12th grade classrooms as teaching material.
In 2024, the most read Conversation stories written by WVU researchers were the following:
1. “The roots of the Easter story: Where did Christian beliefs about Jesus’ resurrection come from?,” by Aaron Gale, associate professor of religious studies in the WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences.
2. “The number of religious ‘nones’ has soared, but not the number of atheists — and as social scientists, we wanted to know why,” by Christopher P. Scheitle, associate professor of sociology, and Katie Corcoran, professor of sociology, both of the Eberly College.
3. “Are our fears of saying ‘no’ overblown?,” by Julian Givi, associate professor of marketing at the WVU John Chambers College of Business and Economics, and Colleen P. Kirk.
4. “Climate change is shifting the zones where plants grow — here’s what that could mean for your garden,” by Matt Kasson, associate professor of mycology and plant pathology at the WVU Davis College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
5. “Hundreds of thousands of U.S. infants every year pay the consequences of prenatal exposure to drugs, a growing crisis particularly in rural America,” by Amna Umer, pediatric research associate professor at WVU Health Sciences.
Kasson, a six-time contributor, has seen his articles translated into Portuguese and Indonesian. Through his work with The Conversation, he has helped readers understand whether fungi could cause a zombie apocalypse, as well as how to keep jack-o’-lanterns from turning into moldy, maggoty mush before Halloween.
“I wouldn’t be the science writer I am today without The Conversation,” Kasson said. “Writing for The Conversation has been one of the most rewarding decisions of my career at WVU.”
Writing for The Conversation can bring benefits like interest from media, as it did for Katelyn Best, teaching assistant professor of musicology at the WVU College of Creative Arts and Media, whose article about her research on hip-hop within the Deaf community resulted in an interview with KCBS, a radio station in San Francisco.
But many WVU contributors said they value the chance to speak directly to the public as much as the exposure.
Dr. Arif Sarwari, Dr. E.B. Flink Chair of Internal Medicine and professor of infectious diseases at the WVU School of Medicine, has reached over half a million readers with his Conversation articles, including his most recent story explaining rising fungal infections in hospitals.
Sarwari said making complex medical topics simple to understand is a skill he relies on as a clinician educator, and “writing for The Conversation serves the same mission of converting scientific narratives to simple prose, but for a broader audience.”
Alexander Kurov, who holds the Fred T. Tattersall Research Chair in Finance at the WVU Chambers College, has written regularly for The Conversation since his first article about Fed rate hike anxiety appeared in 2016. Like Sarwari, Kurov has reached around half a million readers and valued the chance to connect with a large readership in jargon-free language.
“I enjoy writing for The Conversation,” he said. “It lets me reach a wide audience and help others learn something about my research or about how financial markets work. It has even improved my academic writing by forcing me to write simply and clearly and think about what makes a good story.”
Kurov’s articles have been republished in 10 countries by outlets including MarketWatch and Business Insider.
A little more than half of the WVU contributors’ 10 million reads are from within the U.S., with the remaining half million spanning every continent except Antarctica.
Bruce Wilson, chief university and foundation relations officer for The Conversation U.S., called WVU one of the platform’s “standout members, with diverse articles ranging from cybersecurity and spyware invading cell phones to how cockroaches survived an asteroid.”
The land-grant mission makes WVU and The Conversation “perfect partners,” according to Wilson, who added that 72% of Conversation reads last year were for articles written by scholars at public universities like WVU.
Scholars don’t just report to the public when they write for The Conversation, Wilson said — they’re also reporting to federal funding organizations like the National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Agriculture. With The Conversation’s help, grant-givers like those are made aware when researchers they support engage the American people directly through Conversation articles.
Read more WVU articles from The Conversation.
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