In conversation with Associate Professor Siobhan McHugh

In this episode Richard Berry does a long-distance interview with Siobhan McHugh, an Associate Professor of Journalism from the University of Woollongong in Australia. She will be familiar name to anyone working in podcast studies and to any avid listener of narrative documentary podcasts. Siobhan is an active and prolific scholar, a podcast producer and consultant, and the founder of the Radio Doc Review, a pioneering academic journal (https://ro.uow.edu.au/rdr/).

In this interview we explore some of the themes she addresses in her work around the affective power of sound and voice in immersive audio storytelling, drawing on examples of her work; notably her collaborations with The Age newspaper on Phoebe’s Fall, Wrong Skin, and the Last Voyage of the Pong Su. Previously, we have explored the role of podcasting in research and methodologies for peer review in audio work. In this episodes Siobhan discusses the role of ‘Non-Traditional Research Output’ (NTRO) in the Australian system, which has allowed her to weave media practice and applied research in oral history, documentary, and podcast studies.

Personal website: https://siobhanmchugh.org/about/

Podcasts Discussed:

https://www.theage.com.au/interactive/2016/phoebesfall/index.html

https://www.theage.com.au/wrong-skin

https://www.theage.com.au/pong-su

https://www.supremecourt.vic.gov.au/podcast