3.1 Not just the 'general public'!
When considering who
you would like to engage with your research, it can be tempting
to refer simply to the ‘general public’. The term isn’t always
helpful in this context, since it implies that people are a
single homogenous group rather than individuals with different
interests, identities, and concerns; when planning your public
engagement, it can be more useful to think about ‘publics’ as a
plural form, since this allows us to think of the different ways
in which people identify themselves – perhaps as members of
particular communities, or as sharing particular characteristics
or interests. The clearer you can be about who the publics are
that you would like to work with, the easier it will be to devise
appropriate public engagement activities and to target them in
ways that will enable you to reach those groups of people.