Earlier this year I saw an advert calling for research interns to support the development of a new (video-)podcast series at the Ashmolean Museum. As a fan of museums, podcasts and public outreach, and as someone who intends to incorporate as many of these thing as possible into their academic career, I went ahead and applied, and was fortunate to be offered a place.
I feel very strongly that outreach and public-facing scholarship are the way for the Arts and Humanities to survive and revive in a landscape of increasing funding cuts. There seems to be enough curiosity out there about Arts and Humanities subjects (plenty of people tune into History podcasts or Archaeology documentaries, for example) - it is just a case of meeting this curiosity and increasing public engagement by finding digestible ways of sharing research. Fortunately there are many creative media available to us these days, and I was interested in finding out more about how video podcasting could be used to present information and narratives in compelling and accessible ways.
In the course of the placement the production processes for film and podcast were demystified for me. I have learnt about different aspects of production such as location-scouting, initial research conversations (i.e. interviewing people about their episode ideas), putting together research briefs as the basis for scripts, working with programme producers and co-ordinating with all the people involved in a recording session. Since the podcast is based in a museum, we have also been liaising with curators, collections managers and conservation specialists about access to objects and locations, and factual accuracy for the research briefs. The placement has provided a great ‘behind-the-scenes’ view of both film/audio production and the inner workings of a large museum.
Throughout the placement I enjoyed working as part of the Podcast Team and within the wider Audiences & Content directorate at the museum. We benefitted from excellent supervision, feedback and opportunities to learn and develop research and communication skills, and I enjoyed having conversations with a lot of highly interesting, knowledgeable and creative people! I hope that as many of them as possible become colleagues and collaborators in the future. My advice to other OOCDTP students considering a placement would be to go ahead and make the most of the opportunity. I think it is great that we are encouraged and supported to undertake placements that contribute to our professional development and give us more of a taste of the potential real-world impact of Arts and Humanities research (in the form of public outreach or the shaping of public policy, for example). I also found that it was very stimulating to focus for a couple of months on something that is useful for my career and skillset but doesn’t contribute directly to the content of my PhD thesis. I feel I have come back to my own research with more energy and ideas. This has been a very enriching experience.
The podcast episodes should start to be released in 2027.
