Judith Lundberg Felten

How does it feel to be part of Researchers' Friday Stand up?

“Great fun, exciting, challenging, developing as person! So fun to get a chance to be a part of it! I like challenges and have tried a stand-up comedy course over a weekend last winter. It felt like a perfect opportunity to be able to further develop it.”

How can you make research fun?

“By using curious situations from tour everyday experience from the lab (there are many when you open your eyes to it!). Then exaggerate a bit, play with prejudices about the researchers and weave science and a lot of enthusiasm into it and always return to situations, thoughts, things that the audience can relate to.”

What are you researching?

“I am researching the life of the tree root with fungi in the forest soil. How do they communicate with each other? How do they know that each one have good intentions when they are part of a symbiosis and do not defend themselves against the partner? What happens when we cut down the trees and the fungi lose their tree friend and how can we then conduct better forestry with more respect for all terrestrial (micro) organisms?”

What is the most fun and interesting thing about research and what is the challenge?

“The most fun is to be with my research group, to come up with results, to support my doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows and help them find the right path in their projects and to see how they themselves develop during a project. The biggest challenge is to get financing, not to be able to give their employees more stability (due to short contracts) and that it can take very long time to reach results and even longer until they (maybe) are used in reality.”

Why do you think popular(izing) science is important?

“Popular science is important so that researchers can create a relationship of trust with society. We are also just people, we know a lot but not everything and we (me at least) are happy to answer questions about our research topics. There is a lot of knowledge in the research world that can be very useful, but if we do not spread it through our own channels and are visible, fake news will have an increasing place in our world. By telling about our results but also about the way to get there and what is required, we can encourage society to a questioning mind-set and to be source-critical when they read something from non-scientific sources.”

What do you hope to "get out" of the stand up and learn?

“To find a new way to talk about research and to see how the audience receives it.”