Technecast

Happy New Year! We are kicking off 2026 with something different. In November, Techne held its annual Student-Led Conference in London, during which the Technecast team organised a discussion around the idea of untranslatability.  We first hear from Felix, who came up with the idea for the session and provided our participants with a plethora of examples from different languages and disciplines. T...

In the latest - and last - instalment in our Heritage and Memory series, Adrianna Chmielewska talks to Thomas Nixon-Roworth from Sheffield University on his research into clergy and lay relations in mid-17th century England.  In the first half of the episode, Thomas will be talking about the premise of his research and its main themes. Adrianna then talks to Thomas about the fascinating and comple...

This week, we take a brief detour from our usual themes to explore a question at the crossroads of social ethics and technology: Can humans and robots be friends? We are joined by Ruby Hornsby, doctoral researcher at the University of Leeds, to explore this question. We discuss what friendship really means, why she argues it cannot exist with machines, and why it’s worth asking what friendship and...

In the first installment of our 'Nature' theme, Isabel catches up with friend of the podcast, PhD researcher and filmmaker Viveca Mellegård. She fills us in on how her PhD journey has been progressing, and shares an immersive soundscape of her practice with us. ------------ Image: Viveca Mellegård Technecast music: Jennifer Doveton Soundscape: Viveca Mellegård Link to Episode 1 'Secrets of the Pri...

Continuing our Heritage and Memory series, Adrianna Chmielewska talks to Helen Williams on her research into representations of motherhood.  Helen Williams is a first-year doctoral researcher in creative writing at Brunel University of London. An experienced motherhood journalist, Williams is writing a novel based around her research on the ways relationships between generations of university-educ...

In our first episode on the theme of Heritage and Memory, PhD researcher Tom Hull from the University of Brighton talks to us about his research project.  Tom's project uses a combination of archival research, literary criticism and creative writing to deepening our understanding of Dr James Barry. Dr James Barry was many things. He was a pioneering surgeon, performing the first successful caesare...

In honour of International Women's Day, this episode brings together PhD researchers from a range of backgrounds to explore the role of gender in musical traditions and genres (from opera to classical to popular music). Join us as we celebrate the voices of women in music research, dive into everything from Kendrick Lamar’s iconic Super Bowl performance to Dolly Parton’s timeless legacy, and share...

In our final episode of 2024, the team comes together for a roundtable discussion on the theme of ‘care’. Topics include: how can we practice self-care as researchers, particularly in the current turbulent HE landscape? What does care as methodology look like? And does care for ourselves or each other even matter while we are failing to care for our planet? ------------ Image: GoodFon Music: Jenni...

This episode follows a workshop on ‘The Practice of Interviewing: Perspectives from Across the Arts and Humanities’ hosted by the Technecast team on 20 September 2024. First, you will hear from four Technecast members (Isabel, Felix, Olivia, and Pragya) as they share their own interviewing experiences. This is followed by four practice interviews by Gareth Hughes, Tom Railton, Julia Schauerman, an...

In this episode Edwin Gilson and Florence Fitzgerald-Allsopp, both researchers exploring works of art involving nonhumans at the University of Surrey, join Felix for a conversation about our relationship with the flora and fauna around us. We discuss different approaches to art based on nonhumans, the social lenses humans look through at nonhumans, and how their relationships have changed over the...

In our latest instalment of our series on 'Senses', we hear from Rosalind Holgate-Smith. Rosalind is an AHRC-funded doctoral researcher whose work looks at touch, particularly in the field of dance and contact improvisation. In this episode, Rosalind talks to Morag about her conceptualisation of 'Deep Touch', and how this conceptualisation informs and enriches her teaching and dance practice. We h...

Jennifer Doveton - whose lovely music you hear every time you listen to the technecast - is a postgraduate researcher in her third year at Brunel University. Her research is on middle-class subjectivity and moral value in British screen fantasy. At the moment she's looking at the Harry Potter film series and the His Dark Materials television series for markers of class in characterisation and narr...

In this latest episode of our Work and Labour series we hear from Julia Pond, a transdisciplinary dance artist, teacher and researcher working with political economy. She works with choreography, improvised movement and text, humour, and, sometimes, bread dough, often siting work in public space. Currently, this takes shape in her performance project and fictional company BRED. Julia is a co-initi...

David McEwen, a co-founder and director of Unit 38, joins Felix to continue their conversation about architecture and community. Unit 38 is an architecture practice working on community projects in east London, in particular Wards Corner in Tottenham. In this part we hear about Unit 38’s involvement with Clapton Community Football Club, as well as public commons work, situated knowledge, and commu...

David McEwen, a co-founder and director of Unit 38, joins Felix for a conversation about architecture and community. Unit 38 is an architecture practice working on community projects in east London, in particular Wards Corner in Tottenham. The discussion explores questions of community resources, privilege and design focused on people not materials. There is a small amount of explicit language.---...

In this latest instalment of our 'Senses' series we hear from Emma Mitchell. Emma is an AHRC-funded Creative Writing doctoral researcher at Brunel University London whose work uses archival research and experimental literary forms and practices to reclaim the voices of marginalised women from History. Her project focusses on Georgian sex workers and works with contemporary documents, objects and e...

It's the final Technecast of the year! We've had some lovely new members join the Technecast team this year, so we thought we'd take this opportunity to do some introductions. In this casual epsiode, each member of the team answers some questions about themselves and their research. We also discuss our favourite epsiodes from the past year, so it's a bit of Technecast Wrapped, too. We hope you enj...

In the first episode of our 'Work, Labour and Protest' series, Isabel introduces us to her project which explores media representations and lived experiences of working-class women’s unpaid domestic labour in the UK.Isabel is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research focuses on the intersections of class, gender, and labour under neoliberal capitalism. She is currently in the second year of her...

In our last episode on the theme 'narratives of nation', our very own Felix Clutson shares his research into football in the age of globalisation. Felix discusses the ways in which football transcends borders (for better or worse), the modern phenomenon of sportswashing, and the plight of his beloved Reading FC. After his presentation he joins Edwin for a conversation based around the question: is...

Beth Williamson is a PhD student at Royal Holloway, University of London working collaboratively with the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). Her research explores how the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) tackled the problem of ‘orthography’ when recording and mapping place names in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, revealing how geography and linguistics, and politics and diplomacy...

Gareth Hughes is in the second year of his PhD in Comparative Literature and Culture at Royal Holloway. His thesis explores spatial transformations in contemporary French and multilingual poetry. In this episode of the ‘Narratives of Nation’ series, Gareth talks about the multilingual poems of Michèle Métail, the power of poetry to loosen the bind between nationality and language, and how entering...

In the latest instalment of our ‘Narratives of Nation’ series, Rosie Knowles, a PhD researcher at Royal Holloway, tells Isabel about her research into the health geography concept of therapeutic landscapes. In this episode, Rosie shares how her family connections with the steelworks town of Port Talbot inspired her to locate her research here, where she explores therapeutic interactions and connec...

In the first episode of our new theme, 'Narratives of Nation', Lili Toitot, PhD researcher at Brunel, tells Edwin about her work on the mixed national identity of the French region of Alsace. An Alsatian herself, Lili examines the documentation of the region's history through the lens of gender and war memorials. The question that emerges from this episode is: what can we learn from Alsace about n...

We interrupt our scheduled programming to bring you this special episode in light of recent events. Techne's summer congress this year was cancelled due to the on-going industrial action taking place at the University of Brighton. In this episode, the Technecast team explore why industrial action is taking place at Brighton, and the position of the arts and humanities more broadly in UK higher edu...

Finishing up our theme of life writing, Olivia chats to Al Meggs about his work on reclaiming cabaret. Al trained in dance and went on to a long career through the 1980s and 1990s as performer in cabaret, theatre, T.V. and film, before taking on various guises ‘behind the scenes’. Roles that ranged from stage crew to stage manager to production manager and dresser to wardrobe assistant to costume...