Susan Morrison

Stand-up comedian Susan Morrison worked with Beltane to bring together the Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas at the 2013 Festival Fringe.

She speaks here at the Spiegeltent on George Street.

The Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas - which takes place behind her at the Spiegeltent - gets academics to say really quite shocking things, but with a strong scientific basis to provoke people to think.

The world right now is full of easy answers to difficult questions, but we have difficult answers to difficult questions and she would encourage anyone who is grown up enough to listen and contribute to come along to the debate.

Susan says the great thing about the Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas is that you are never sure exactly what is going to happen next.

She continues by saying academics sometimes tend to only talk about their work to other academics - but this event is about academics engaging with the public and talking off the scale which she says is what makes it so exciting.

Susan believes that academics will find this to be an eye-opener as they are taken out of the cosy surroundings of a lecture theatre and on to a loud, lively atmosphere on the street.

She says this will change their persona and fully expects academics to find this very invigorating.

The four universities involved in Beltane are the Napier University, Heriot Watt, Queen Margaret University and the University of Edinburgh.

This is the biggest public engagement event the universities have been involved in - bringing academia to the art world.

Susan says, from her experience of working on Bright Club (a monthly event where academics do stand-up about their work) she has realised that academics often don’t tend to cross-over on research and the Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas does just that and really mixes things up.