UCL Minds

This week we look at parliament’s role in shaping Brexit-related legislation between 2017 and 2019. We ask: What role did parliament play in Brexit? More particularly, how much influence has it had over Brexit legislation? And has it done harm or good? Politics in the UK is in a state of turmoil. Every time we think it can’t get any crazier, it finds a way of doing just that. Many of the roots of...

This week we’re examining the ways we talk about automation and immigration, and how this discourse shapes the economy. We ask: How far are discourses around immigration and automation tied to each other? What is the link between this rhetoric and the economic system known as ‘neo-liberalism’? Is the UK unique in our debates about robots and immigrants, and their effect on the labour market? Rheto...

Date of Lecture: Tuesday 6 December 2022 About the Lecture: For over a decade, the UK has seen an intense focus on “Muslim grooming gangs”. On the one hand, perpetrators have caused very real and significant harms that demand a solid response. On the other, the threat of child sexual exploitation has been actively racialised in ways that are deliberate, misleading and very damaging. In this talk,...

Date of Lecture: Tuesday 29 November 2022 About the Lecture: Girls’ education is frequently portrayed as a panacea – to overpopulation, poverty, harmful social norms, and political instability. This lunchtime lecture critiques this through three presentations from UCL IOE’s Centre for Education and International Development (CEID). The first presentation asks who is promoting strategies about girl...

Presented by Catriona Gold. In this series, we ask scholars at UCL to reflect on the meaning and practice of Critical Global Health. In this episode, Professor Shabbar Jaffar (Director of the UCL Institute for Global Health) discusses the central issues and strategies involved in creating and maintaining equitable partnerships. In particular, he highlights the importance of clear goals, communicat...

Date of Lecture: 22 November 2022 About the Lecture: Human behaviour is at the heart of managing pandemic infections such as Covid19, for example wearing facemasks indoors when transmission is high and self-isolating when ill or testing positive for Covid19. Behavioural science helps us to understand why such behaviours do or do not occur and to identify key influences on behaviour: people’s capab...

Dr Harry Kennard talks to Catherine Tonne about the burden of unhealthy air pollution. For more information and to access the transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/energy/news/2022/dec/climate-change-and-health-episode-7-burden-unhealthy-air-pollution Date of episode recording: 2022-11-23 Duration: 00:28:28 Language of episode: English Presenter: Harry Kennard Guests: Catherine Tonne Producer: Harry...

Ellie Cosgrove uses dance and play to create inclusive engineering designs, while Will Newton oversees student projects that utilise gaming systems to create virtual worlds for simulated driving. Date of episode recording: 2021-11-22 Duration: 30:12 Language of episode: English Presenter: Cassidy Martin Guests: Ellie Cosgrove; Will Newton Producer: Cassidy Martin

An inside look at COP27 through the lens of two experts from The Bartlett who took part. This November, the 27th session of the Conference of the Parties of UNFCCC, or COP27, was hosted in Egypt. Throughout the conference, heads of state, ministers, climate activists and academics met to discuss and reach agreements on how to mitigate and prevent the impact of climate change. In this episode of Bu...

Join host Helen Czerski as she discusses what happened at the COP27 conference, and whether the negotiations went far enough. Helen is joined by Dr Nadia Ameli and Katie Kedward to discuss the financial implications of COP27, international financial institutions, and also the focus on loss and damage at COP27. We also hear from Zi Han Xuan, UCL Student and climate activist with YOUNGO, the youth c...

This week we ask: How should you run the public administration? Should administration be close to or insulated from politics? And what should the role of private and other non-state actors be? We’re focusing this week on public administration. While mention of the word bureaucracy rarely lifts hearts, it’s incredibly important for the development of public policy, for the delivery of public servic...

First released 7 October 2022. This week we’re beginning a new series of the podcast by surveying some of the big issues in politics around the world today. We’ll be covering Ukraine, climate change, the health of democracy in the UK, and much more. The podcast has been on its summer break over the last few months, but politics certainly hasn’t stopped. The war in Ukraine has rumbled on. The globa...

Mehiyar Kathem talks to Sir Terence Clark, former British Ambassador to Iraq and until recently, chair of the Friends of Basrah Museum, about his work in establishing the Basrah Museum. For more information and to access the transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/nahrein/media/podcasts/transcript-conversation-sir-terence-clark Date of episode recording: 2020-01-20 Duration: 00:21:06 Language of episode: Englis...

Presented by Catriona Gold. In this series, we ask scholars at UCL to reflect on the meaning and practice of Critical Global Health. In this episode, Dr Rochelle Burgess (UCL Institute for Global Health) discusses the tensions and pitfalls of the concept of “decoloniality” or “decolonialism” as it is used in Northern academic contexts, with “critical global health” potentially a useful alternative...

Welcome back to UCL Generation One: The Climate Podcast. We’re back for a two-part series, and part one is coming to you live from COP27 in Sharm El-Sheik. Join Prof Mark Maslin as he takes us through the conference centre, and chats to multiple people along the journey. Views expressed by our guests are their own. For more information and to access the transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/climate-change/pod...

In today's episode, we are pleased to share with you our very first radio play. The play we will be sharing with you today is called Gravity and it was written by Katie Caden. Caden is an alumnus of Soho Writers Lab and has had her work performed at Vault festival, the Bunker Theatre, Southwark Playhouse, Theatre 503, Camden People's Theatre and Battersea Arts Centre. Her last show 'Paper Straws',...

Date of Lecture: 3 November 2022 About the Lecture: Randomised clinical trials are the cornerstone of evidence-based medicine. Professor Parmar will present how the design of the randomised clinical trial has been changed to improve outcomes for patients more quickly. This will be exemplified throughout by the STAMPEDE trial. The trial was started in 2005 when men with metastatic prostate cancer h...

Presented by Catriona Gold. In this series, we ask scholars at UCL to reflect on the meaning and practice of Critical Global Health. In this episode, Professor David Osrin (UCL Institute for Global Health) discusses his approach to researching and teaching urban health. He explains the ‘structural’ nature of urban health, and what he sees as a critical approach to the topic. He also reflects on ch...

Interview with Dr Robert Bewley, Director of EAMENA Mehiyar Kathem interviews Oxford University based archaeologist Dr Robert Bewley, Project Director and Co-founder of the EAMENA project. For more information and to access the transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/nahrein/media/podcasts/transcript-conversation-robert-bewley Date of episode recording: 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z Duration: 00:16:37 Language of episod...

Listen to Dr Olcay Muslu Gardner speak about musical traditions, sustainability and the scholarship she undertook at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). Dr Olcay is assistant professor at the Mustafa Kemal Hatay University, Turkey. She is the first recipient of the Visiting Scholars Scheme to be jointly supported by the British Institute at Ankara. Her work is concerned with identif...

COP26: Perspectives from a UCL student delegate from a small-island developing state. UCL Master's Student Jhénelle Williams talks about her perspective on the SDGs and their impact on Jamaica. For more info and to access the transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/sustainable-development-goals/ Date of episode recording: 2022-11-01 Duration: 00:23:02 Language of episode: English Presenter:Professor Monica Lakh...

How Climate Change is affecting the implementation of the SDGs. Do the SDGs go far enough, and how can we make real progress on tackling climate change? For more info and to access the transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/sustainable-development-goals/ Date of episode recording: 2022-10-01 Duration: 00:31:01 Language of episode: English Presenter: Professor Monica Lakhanpaul; Dr Priti Parikh Guests: Professo...

Date of Lecture: Tuesday 25 October About the lecture: The lecture will focus on the way the expression of genes with pathogenic variants can be manipulated to generate the desired outcome in children with the most common and severe neuromuscular conditions, Duchenne muscular dystrophy and Spinal muscular atrophy. Professor Muntoni will also briefly discuss the recent developments in the field of...

Kamal Achuthan uses IM@UCL's facility to simulate large scale maritime operations and help students gain perspective, while Laura Toni uses maths equations in combination with virtual and augmented reality to understand driver navigation preferences. For more information and to access the transcript: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/engineering/intelligent-mobility-ucl-podcast Date of episode recording: 2021...

Date of Lecture: 18 October 2022 About the Lecture: How do you weigh a tree, let alone a forest? The recent increased focus on trees as tools in the fight against climate change, and the subsequent rush to see who can plant the most trees, assumes that we know how much carbon trees store (and how that can change). But do we? Our current understanding relies on very simplistic models and assumptio...