Facilitation & moderation
Professional facilitation & moderation for science and research
Research, science and research and science communication thrive on interaction, collaboration, and shared insights—but driving meaningful dialogue isn’t always straightforward.
Whether it’s a research meeting, academic workshop, or science communication event, having a skilled facilitator or moderator can make all the difference. We provide expert guidance to ensure structured, productive conversations, encourage diverse perspectives, and help your group move forward with clarity and purpose.
Let us help you create impactful meetings and events that inspire action.
Moderation? Facilitation? What’s the difference?
A moderator guides conversations and talks in a meeting, forum, panel or debate. They keep discussions on track, and use questions to draw out insights for the audience.
A facilitator helps to design and guide collaborative sessions that involve participants in building knowledge, generating ideas, and making decisions or contributions that lead to new outcomes.
Lively, engaging moderation for science and research meetings
Our moderators are adept at making ordinary panel discussions, presentation series and speaking events lively, engaging and audience-centred.
We know that our role as moderators is to help you produce and direct successful sessions and events. We’re not interested in being the “star” of the event: our approach is all about making your session run smoothly, generating audience interest and interaction, facilitating conversations, and keeping the session on time.
Our tried and tested process includes:
- Getting clarity about what you, the organiser, want to achieve, and what you want your audience to get out of the event
- Agreeing on the most effective format for the event
- If possible, involving the audience before the event with registration questions
- Conducting individual preparation conversations with panelists and speakers. Depending on the need, this might involve helping participants focus on 2-3 key points that they want to communicate, preparing questions, and getting speakers comfortable with the format.
- On the day, setting the scene so that participants and the audience know what to expect.
- Professional introductions, careful time-keeping, neutral questioning and highlighting potential areas where speakers might start a conversation.
- Managing a lively, engaging question and answer session, whilst keeping an eye on potential challenges from the audience.
- Timely conclusion and summary that sends everyone away wanting more.
And, of course, we follow up all our moderation sessions with a written update or personal debrief for the organisers.
The result? Sessions that are enjoyable, interesting and useful for speakers and the audience alike.
Focused and flexible facilitation of workshops, meetings and planning sessions
Our facilitators are experts in designing experiential and interactive meetings, making sure that all voices are heard, and encouraging conversations to flow in a direction where they achieve the most positive outcomes.
We use a variety of tried and tested facilitation tools and techniques to untangle important issues. Whether you want to determine the cause of a problem, generate ideas and solutions, craft a strategy, create a plan for the future, or design an interactive programme to engage and involve people in a big idea, our custom-designed approach will ensure that the session structure and design is right for your group. Our process is simple. We:
- design programmes, workshops and meetings with the audience and outcomes in mind
- reframe objections and sensitively handle negativity or objections.
- enable everyone in the room to participate “without fear or favour” (in an equal and fair way)
- explore what comes to the surface
- embed collaboration in everything that we do to ensure that outcomes are tangible
We use simple strategies and a delicate balance of conceptual and reflective activities to encourage conversations. This approach enhances communication, promotes integration, develops synergy and, ultimately, helps participants generate ideas, strategies, and actions.
After all sessions and workshops, we provide detailed feedback to help you reinforce outcomes and ensure that progress doesn’t stop at the end of the workshop.
The result? Collaborative sessions that lead to tangible outcomes.
Tell us a bit about you and what you need
Complete the short form below, and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. Alternatively, be spontaneous and book a call straight into our calendar, and we’ll talk through your situation and some initial ideas on a Zoom call.
The businesses and brands we’ve supported over the years
We’ve been around since 2005, and we are lucky enough to have built up strong relationships with many of our clients over the years, many of whom have said nice things about our work and our approach.
Suzanne Whitby ranks in the top 3% of experts that I have ever met. She is smart, sharp, professional, insightful and delivers great results. I have worked with her as a colleague and on my own business projects. She understands all aspects of and is one of the first people I seek to consult and involve in all my projects. She is outstanding. If you get a chance to work with her, then do.