How to give
a great
presentation
Tips, tricks, & tools
Dr. Tomáš Glomb
Dr. Martin Lang
Academic
presentation
• Purpose?
• What is a good presentation?
Types of presentations I
Standard ~20 min presentation
• Usual conference format
• This is what we will train
• Presentation with slides on your original research + a few
minutes of Q&A
Panel presentation
• Often a series of talks on a similar topic
• Open/close panels
• General discussion after panel ends
Lightning talk
• Can be as low as five minutes
• Attract people to learn more – often entertaining
Types of presentations II
Keynote talk
• Formal, highlight of the conference
• Comes with status and duties – be around for others,
drive discussion
• Great for visibility
Poster presentation
• A specific format that would require a separate lecture
• Often part of a conference, yet many people think it is
inferior
• But a great way to engage with younger colleagues, get
feedback, interesting discussions, and icebreaker!
Tips...
Know your audience
• Structure of the presentation –
disciplinary genre
• Ratio of previous theory to your
contribution skewed a bit more
towards the former
• Explain and define basic terms
• Avoid jargon
Disciplines
• Casual vs dignified? (think of Tom vs
Joseph)
• Appropriate language/attire
Formality
• Do you need to introduce yourself
and/or your lab?
Can give more behind-the-scences of
your research
• Appropriate for jokes, personal
anecdotes?
Familiarity
How to hook your
audience?
• Be energetic, passionate
• Start with a real-life intriguing
example (dark therapy)
• Include rhetoric questions or
instructions for the audience
(e.g., guessing results)
• Include jokes
A word of caution...
• We often talk about sensitive topics,
especially during public talks
• Here, know your audience is doubly
important
• Might be good to preface your talk
• Be sensitive to how you frame your
research
Non-verbal
communication
•Can affect how energized/bored the audience will be
•Often depends if you need to interact with the PC (clickers!)
•But running there and back may seem too chaotic – depends on the formality
of the setting
Seating/standing
•May express confidence
•Try to find some nodding heads in the audience and talk to them (and likewise
reciprocate this service!)
•Smile!
Posture and eye-contact
•Good to underscore a specific point
•But too much may seem chaotic
Hand-gestures
•May affect how knowledgeable the presenter is
•Short pauses, especially if planned, are desirable because they give people
time to think (but you need to be confident in those pauses)
•Also ok to make a pause to drink water
Fluency
BUT you do you!
Stress
management
• Stress is good!
Stress
management
• Imposter syndrome
• BUT, remember, audience is your friend!
Stress
management
“The audience is your friend. They want you to give a
good talk. This is because most people are kind, and also
because a good talk is in their own interests.
They want to spend the next 20 or 30 or 60 minutes being
informed, challenged, amused, and so on—and hope very
much you will succeed at doing this.
If they feel like you are working towards that end, that you
want this too and are trying your best, they will forgive
your slip-ups and cheer on your successes.”
https://smallpotatoes.paulbloom.net/p/how-to-give-a-better-
than-average
Stress
management
• Sometimes admitting that you are stressed at
the beginning of your presentation can make
other people more sympathetic and they will
try to help you
• You can joke about your nervosity
• Credit people in the room
Stress
management
• You are most important to...you!
• Spotlight effect
• “when you find yourself mortified or overly worried about the
impression you'll make, remember that other people simply don't pay
as much attention to you as you think they do”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/are-we-born-
racist/201206/the-spotlight-effect
Stress
management
• But there are more practical things you can
do..
• Be prepared – train at home and be confident
you know what you want to say
• Sleep enough, avoid caffeine
• Wear comfortable cloths
• Be early at the presentation spot, familiarize
yourself with technology
• Before presentation – breathing exercises,
visualizations
English
Science is trans-national, it’s ok if your English is not perfect
(but your science should be!)
Tips:
• Simple language is good and preferable over jargon
• What if I can’t recall a particular word?
• Czenglish – (way how, Spanish village, sympathic)
• Filler words (some, like, you know)
Time
management
• Try it at home – it will be slower than you
think!
• But be careful in powerpoint on the auto-slide
function
• No one ever complained about presentation
ending before allocated time
• What if I get a time warning?
Presentation visual
Software
• Many out there – we
“recommend” PowerPoint
(sometimes required)
• We have license, a lot of
advice online
• Pretty simple, actually
• But may be disciplinary
specific!
• Show how to record
General advice
• Slides are for audience, not
you (you have notes – how to
use them?)
• For each illustration, think
why it is there (support or
distract?)
• Each illustration should be
legible – especially graphs and
text
• Key points rather than full
sentences (“PowerPoint
karaoke”)
• “Less is more”
Specific advice
• Where to get illustrations? Be
aware of copyright! (Picture
banks, AI, Clipart)
• When explaining graphs,
describe Y and X axes – focus
on key graphs
• Be mindful of accessibility –
color contrasts, font size
Structure
• “Tell them what you’re going to tell them. Tell
them. Tell them what you’ve told them.”
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2015/02/20/ho
w-to-win-at-academic-presentations/
Structure I
Greet, thank
organizers/who
introduced you
First slide – title of
the talk, name, event,
year, affiliation logos
Introduce you/your
team and your
research question –
hook the audience
Show structure of the
presentation (how
you will tackle the
research question)
Introduction to what
has been done –
5min? (show you did
your reading)
HOWEVER moment –
show the gap – this is
where your
contribution comes in
Structure II
Methods
(participants, questions,
experimental designs,
data sets)
Results
(ideally present in a
visual way –
graphs/table)
Tie results back to your
research question –
interpretation of the
data/what it means for
theory
Conclusion – remind
what you set out to do,
what you found, and
what the audience
should remember
Last slide – thank co-
authors/whoever
helped, funders, links to
your web/publications
Handling
discussions
• You can prepare answers to expected
questions
• Not understanding question: “I am not sure I
follow, could you please re-state your
question?”
• Not knowing what to answer: “I hadn’t
thought about that, that’s really useful. Could
we perhaps discuss this during the coffee
break?”
• More of a comment than a question
• Offensive question/criticism – “I believe that
this is orthogonal to our discussion here and
would be happy to discuss more over coffee”
• Sometimes nobody asks
Chairing
sessions
• Introduce each speaker – look up their
websites, or at least their affiliation and title of
the talk in the book of abstracts
• Check time, give 5 min warnings and when
someone is overtime, perhaps passive
agrressive
• Give people time to think about questions
• Prefer underrepresented groups (JM research)
• Have a question prepared in case there are no
questions
Elevator
pitch
• 30-60 secs
• Who you are, what you do, and what you want
to do
• share your expertise and credentials quickly
and effectively
• Should be shaped based on whom you talk
and what you may want
• Be positive (about things you want to do)
• Practice, practice, practice