Learning on ScreenLondon Scool of Economics turns on to Audio
Amy Mollett collecting vox pops in Chinatown.
The link between the podcasts and our books blog allows for even greater innovation in the way we are able to incorporate sound into everyday blogging. In our most recent episode on China and its global diaspora, Middlesex University researchers Rosemary Sales and Xia Lin walked us through London’s Chinatown to uncover the area’s sociological complexities. The interview provided a wealth of material that ultimately didn’t make the final edit for the podcast. However, these cuts did were useful for an interactive feature I developed where I pinned specific points of interest, like the pagoda or the stone lions, onto Google Maps, and then linked each pin to a YouTube extract that played relevant clips and a slideshow of pictures taken on the day.
Due to the early success of the LSERB podcasts, we are rolling out similar ‘magazine-style’ podcasts on our sister blogs, European Politics and Policy at LSE (with an already produced and named series – voxEUROPP), British Politics and Policy at LSE and also on our Impact of Social Sciences blog. I take the time to train members of our blog team in microphone and interview techniques to ensure we maintain a consistent quality of sound. voxEUROPP has gained a sizeable audience in its first episode on the rise of the far right in Europe, and we will soon release another featuring Noam Chomsky.
As I wrote in a recent blog post, if academic study is about real people, places and events, then why not bring academia to the streets? We do many interviews in staid university rooms, but we feel most comfortable escaping the confines of our campus to interview academics and authors in the real-world spaces they seek to explain in their day-to-day research.
In an essay on sound, inspired by Berendt’s take on the senses, sociologist Michael Bull and Les Back say, ‘Thinking with our ears offers an opportunity to augment our critical imaginations, to comprehend our world and our encounters with it according to multiple registers of feeling.’ As universities pay heed to the coming Research Excellence Framework and consider the best methods of increasing impact, the combination of podcasting and the wide-reach Internet platforms provide could prove a rewarding way forward. The social sciences are rich with stories and no doubt innovative uses with sound can help bring these stories to life.
To listen to the podcasts visit: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/podcasts/
Cheryl Brumley
