I am a PhD student in Physics, and was invited to give a talk about the theoretical side/perspectives of an observable at a conference for (mostly) experimental researchers. I have worked a bit on this topic and have a relatively good understanding, but I’m certainly no expert, and therefore need to present works and results from other people (both other theorists and past experiments).
As this is the first time I have to give an “overview” talk, I’m a little unsure on how to prepare it. My specific questions are:
- How do I select a handful of relevant results/points to include?
- I have 30 (+15) minutes, which is not enough to cover every single thing that has been done, and also I don’t want to overcram the talk.
- Probably some audience members have worked on this (I don’t know the participants), and it would probably be bad academically (and for my career?) if I don’t even mention their work.
- Naturally, I will include one result from myself.
- Some of the results from other people are not great and criticized amongst a portion of the community. Should I bring this up? And how can I be as objective as possible since I haven’t been on the field for that long?
- Does it make sense to structure the talk from a historical perspective? That is, starting from the first insights with toy models and building up to the state-of-the-art and then future perspectives with new experiments?
- Is it appropriate to make it clear in the beginning that I am not an expert on the subject? This feels correct/safe to me but I wonder if this would turn off the audience.
I have given talks before and am for the most part confident on my delivery, but I always spoke about my own current work, never about other researcher’s. Also, being a young scientist I can’t help but feel insecure.