The Relativity Group regularly participates in outreach activities. Below is a list of some of our recent and upcoming public engagement activities. If you are organising a public engagement activity and would like us to get involved, please contact us.

Public talks organised by the Group

• May 2025: Prof. Chris Lintott (University of Oxford),
  “Our Accidental Universe: Discoveries from Asteroids to Aliens”, Royal Irish Academy
• July 2024: Prof. Shane Larson (CIERA/Northwestern),
  “MONSTERS IN THE COSMIC SEA: Black hole tales from the edge of space and time”, UCD O’Reilly Hall
• August 2022: Prof. Alicia Sintes (University of the Balearic Islands),
  “Exploring the Universe with Gravitational Waves”, UCD O’Brien Centre for Science
• January 2019: Prof. Scott Hughes (MIT),
  “Einstein’s Ears: The new astronomy of gravitational waves“, UCD O’Briend Centre for Science

Public engagement carried out by the Group

• June 2025: UCD festival: Both the Black hole VR headset and the poster exhibition on “Ireland’s Maths Superwomen” were on display at the UCD Innovation Academy. Barry Wardell and Christiana Pantelidou had very interesting chats with a lot of people, of all ages and backgrounds.
• February 2025: In celebration of the “2025 International day of Women and Girls in STEM’, Christiana Pantelidou and the UCD Innovation academy hosted 80 pupils form 2 different schools in Dublin to the UCD Makers space. There, they talked about science, they saw how 3D printers work and they said Hello to Pepper the Robot.
• November 2024: The poster exhibition on “Ireland’s Maths Superwomen” was launched at the Herritage Centre, Ardara, Co. Donegal, as part of Science Week. The following day, Christiana Pantelidou visited Gaelscoil na gCeithre Maistri, Co. Donegal, where she talked with the pupils about these inspiring Irish women.
• May 2022: Christiana Pantelidou gave a talk entitled “Black holes: the dark heart of General Relativity” at the first ever Pint of Science event in Co. Donegal. This was followed by a Q&A session as well as activities that included how gravity could be viewed as the curvature of spacetime, how time gets curved around a black hole and of course, a demonstration of our virtual reality black hole experience.
• June 2020: Science Asylum: “How Weird Can Orbits Get?” – Science YouTube Creator Nick Lucid consulted with Phil Lynch for his video explaining gravitational orbits. As well as providing details of initial conditions for Nick’s Schwarzshild geodesic calculations, Phil also provided a Kerr geodesic calculation animation.
• May 2020: Science Gallery Dublin Livestream – Niels Warbruton, Josh Mathews and Phil Lynch were invited to partake in a livestreamed interview with Trinity PhD student, Luara Murphy, as part of the online “Invisible” exhibition, organized by the Dublin Science Gallery. They discuss the science behind our black hole VR experience, the inspiration behind the project, and the role VR can play in science communication.
• March 2020: Invisible at Science Gallery Dublin – Our group was invited to provide set up an installation of our black hole VR experience for the “Invisible” exhibition. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the exhibit had to be moved online. To aid with this, we released the Oculus Quest version of the experience for free on the SideQuest store.
• November 2019: Science Week – For Science week our group travelled to Birr Castle. The day started with a talk on gravity, spacetime and black holes, a discussion on careers in science research and how to get there as well as a series of activities, such as showing how gravity could be viewed as the curvature of spacetime, our virtual reality black hole experience and more. Next up that evening we attended the Astronomy on Tap event at The Chestnut pub organised by I-LOFAR and Birr Castle. Niels and Ben both gave great talks about black holes and gravitational waves and each were followed by questions from the audience. We also demonstrated our black hole virtual reality experience and participated in a science quiz.
• November 2019: Mayo Dark Sky Festival – Many of the members of our group (Niels Warburton, Leanne Durkan, Kevin Kiely, Philip Lynch and Josh Mathews) travelled to Newport in county Mayo to attend the festival.
• September 2019: For Culture Night 2019, members of the group travelled to Dunsink Observatory (former residence of Sir William Rowan Hamilton) for a night of astronomy, history and scientific outreach. Roughly 800 people attended the Dunsink Culture Night event which was a collaboration between research groups from DIAS, Trinity College Dublin and UCD.
• May 2019: Niels Warburton gave a talk on “Black Hole Astronomy” at a Dublin Pint of Science Festival event. The talk blurb was:

Outreach Initiatives

• Virtual Reality Headset:

  Black holes are simultaneously fiendishly complex (as solutions to Einstein’s field equations of general relativity) and wonderfully simple; a black hole can be completely characterised by just three numbers: its mass, spin and charge.

  They also don’t suck in everything around them. That is, unless you are very close to them, black holes act like any other massive body. For example, if you were to squeeze the Earth down to the size of a small coin it would become a black hole. This black-hole-Earth would not suck in the moon, which would keep orbiting around the coin-sized Earth.

  These are just some of the ideas we try to get across when discussing our research with a broad audience. We also have a black hole Virtual Reality (VR) experience to help people to picture what is a black hole; here is a video demonstrating it on YouTube.

  The VR headset featured in many of the public engagement activities of the Group. Most notably, it was showcased at the Invisible exhibition at the Science Gallery Dublin (March 2020).

• Ireland’s Maths Superwomen

  Funded by the Royal Society and led by Dr Christiana Pantelidou, the initiative “Ireland’s Maths Superwomen” introduces 8-10-year-old kids to 7 pioneering Irish female mathematicians, celebrating their achievements and demonstrating the powerful ways that maths can shape our world, from everyday life to groundbreaking discoveries. It aims to challenge stereotypes, break down barriers, and encourage young girls to see themselves in roles where they can make a real impact—whether that’s in maths, science, or technology. Representation matters, and showing kids the diverse faces of mathematics helps them envision limitless possibilities.

  This initiative comprises of a high-quality printed set of the posters that will travel around the island of Ireland (focusing on rural parts) to Schools and community centres, while the posters are also available online through this website. The exhibition takes a whole island approach (Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland) and is available in both English and Irish. The launch of the project took place in The Heritage Center, Ardara, Co. Donegal during Science Week 2024.

  So far, this project has received a substantial amount of attention. In particular, other that being highlighted in UCD Communications, the initiative was included in the handbook of the Department of Education to all primary and post-primary schools in Ireland and was highlighted in a radio interview of Dr Christiana Pantelidou on 92.5 Phoenix FM.