When I saw an advertisement for an opportunity to work with the Ashmolean Museum on a new podcast series, I applied almost immediately. I truly believe that history should be made as easily accessible as possible for everyone, as history and stories have the power to foster empathy and challenge our assumptions about what is ‘normal’. The podcast opportunity offered a chance to put this belief into practice, and to explore using (relatively) new forms of information dissemination.
Working with two other PhD researchers, we mainly worked on the pre-production of the podcast. We joined at the very start, and so our initial work involved market research, and producing findings about the format we thought would be best suited to the Ashmolean. We, following conversations with the Podcast Lead, agreed that each episode would take a central item that both had an interesting story, and also opened up the discussion to bigger questions that we all grapple with today.
With such a mission statement, we turned our attention to the 51-episode-long programme. To identify episodes, we reached out to colleagues both within the Ashmolean, but also in other GLAM institutions and colleges. We were searching for interesting items, and, if possible, items which helped highlight current research undertaken in Oxford. It was a great pleasure and honour to have so many interesting conversations with so many scholars and passionate people in such a short space of time, and to learn about cultures and methods of historical research that I had little, if any, knowledge of.
Finally, with our programme provisionally outlined, we turned attention towards developing individual episodes. I am particularly proud of the research and stories that I worked on, which not only took me from San Francisco in the 1970s to the early modern Bay of Biafra, but also challenged me to consider how do we ethically tell stories about complicated pasts, and how we can recover and foreground marginalised voices.
I believe that the placement has been a great teaching experience. I have had the opportunity to work with a small team on a creative project, and I have learned much about managing personal preferences alongside the demands of a cultural institution and the expectations of a general audience. It has also been a pleasure to get a better understanding of the inner workings of a museum, and the amazing variety of work that is undertaken to ensure that history is made accessible.
For any students considering undertaking a placement, I would highly recommend it. Not only do you get a better idea of the ways in which research can be applied outside of academia, but it also allows you to return to your research with fresh eyes. Ensure that you are willing to be proactive and take advantage of opportunities when they come up, and the effort will pay dividends.
