UCL Minds

The practical challenges of surviving harsh environments and limited resources in outer space have long been a focus of space research. But how might asking questions about living differently in space help us meet the challenges of living differently on earth? In this episode, we explore this with Dr Aaron Parkhurst as he discusses his multidisciplinary approach to studying ‘off-world living’. From Martian homes to exercise trampolines and funeral practices, we discuss the benefits of bringing together researchers from anthropology, architecture, art, design, cardiovascular science, molecular biology, psychiatry, and sustainable construction to open thinking about living well and the need, not only to survive, but to thrive. Aaron Parkhurst is an Associate Professor in medical anthropology at UCL. His work combines interests in science and genetics, cyborgs, the body and technology, and immigration, to address the complex challenge of how we might live differently on earth and beyond. For the podcast transcript, details of our other podcasts and activities visit: http://tinyurl.com/mubmxu4n Date of episode recording: 2023-10-19T00:00:00Z Duration: 00:24:45 Language of episode: English Presenter: Lili Golmohammadi Guests: Aaron Parkhurst Producer: Matt Aucott, Cerys Bradley

What do we mean when we talk about collaborative social science? Why is collaborative research useful? What are the standout themes of the collaborative projects featured in this second season of Together We Create? In this episode, we discuss these questions and more with Professor Carey Jewitt, Chair of UCL's Collaborative Social Science Domain. Carey Jewitt is Professor of Technology and Learning at the UCL Knowledge Lab, based in the Department of Culture, Communication and Media at the Institute of Education. She brings her interdisciplinary training from fine art and media, sociology, and multimodal discourse to research how the use of digital technologies shapes people’s interaction, communication, and learning in a variety of contexts. For the podcast transcript, details of our other podcasts and activities visit: http://tinyurl.com/mubmxu4n Date of episode recording: 2024-02-16T00:00:00Z Duration: 00:19:47 Language of episode: English Presenter: Lili Golmohammadi Guests: Carey Jewitt Producer: Matt Aucott, Cerys Bradley

This week we ask "how can we improve public services?" In particular, what are the structures and management strategies that best enable effective service delivery? Date of episode recording: 2023-12-14T00:00:00Z Duration: 36:08 Language of episode: English (UK)

 Presenter: Prof Alan Renwick Guests: Marc Esteve Producer: Eleanor Kingwell-Banham Transcript link: https://ucl-uncovering-politics.simplecast.com/episodes/improving-public-services/transcript

This week, we’re looking at how Russian leaders talk about sovereignty. In particular, how do their ideas about sovereignty help them rationalise war in Ukraine? Date of episode recording: 2023-12-07T00:00:00Z Duration: 34:46 Language of episode: English (UK)

 Presenter: Prof Alan Renwick Guests: Kalina Zhekova Producer: Eleanor Kingwell-Banham Transcript link: https://ucl-uncovering-politics.simplecast.com/episodes/russian-discourses-of-sovereignty/transcript

This week we’re discussing the politics of climate change and loss and damage policy, ahead of the upcoming COP28 conference. Date of episode recording: 2023-11-23T00:00:00Z Duration: 39:39 Language of episode: English Presenter: Emily McTernan Guests: Lisa Vanhala Producer: Eleanor Kingwell-Banham Transcript link: https://ucl-uncovering-politics.simplecast.com/episodes/climate-change-loss-and-damage/transcript

This week we’re looking at the role of historical research in political science. What’s it good for, and how’s it best done? Date of episode recording: 2023-11-30T00:00:00Z Duration: 33:56 Language of episode: English Presenter:Prof Alan Renwick Guests: Sam Erkiletian and Zeynep Bulutgil Producer: Eleanor Kingwell-Banham

This episode focuses on the recent emergent issues in Gaza, delving into the unfolding events and their broader impact, especially within the Global South. Date of episode recording: 2023-11-24T00:00:00Z Duration: 01:01:07 Language of episode: English Presenter: Dr. Mezna Qato; Dr. Sertac Sehlikoglu Guests: Dr. Goldie Asuri; Dr. Saada Toor; Dr. Sanaa Alimia Producer: Meryem Zisan Koker; Hazal Aydin

About the Lecture: The extent to which a face appears alive or lifeless has long been a topic in psychology, with the idea that more humanlike-looking faces achieve greater familiarity until a point is reached at which subtle imperfections give a sensation of strangeness – the uncanny valley effect. The uncanny valley effect term describes the sense of discomfort or unease we experience when we encounter a robot with certain human-like characteristics. With rapid advances in technology, AI-generated faces are now widely available and are being used for both helpful and criminal purposes, from finding missing children to transmitting political misinformation via fake social media accounts. In this talk, Dr Krumhuber will give a brief historical perspective on how we have overcome the uncanny valley with AI faces that are now indistinguishable from human faces. Also, Dr Krumhuber will present her recent work which found that White AI faces are judged as human more often than actual human faces—a phenomenon we term AI hyperrealism. About the Speaker Eva Krumhuber is associate professor in the Department of Experimental Psychology at University College London. Much of her work is concerned with the empirical investigation of the socio-cognitive and affective processes in human perception and behaviour. This includes research on facial expressions, especially morphological and dynamic features and their role in emotion interpretation. More recently, she started exploring commonalities and differences in human and machine classification of emotions, with a particular focus on how various elicitation methods (i.e., posed, spontaneous, naturalistic) influence recognition accuracy. She has published widely within the field of psychology and computer science.

About the Lecture: In 2022 the government introduced the out-of-home calorie labelling policy in England to help people make informed nutritional decisions as part of a broader strategy to reduce rates of obesity. However, little is known about how this policy impacts people’s mental health, especially those with lived experience of eating disorders. This lecture will explore why the policy might be harmful for people with lived experience of eating disorders, what the current evidence says, and potential impacts for public policy. In particular, we will discuss whether public health policies can be inclusive of both obesity prevention and eating disorder prevention. About the speaker: Nora Trompeter is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Child Health. Nora has a background in developmental psychology and completed her PhD in 2022 at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Her research is focused on identifying social and emotional risk factors for the development of eating disorder symptoms in adolescents. Ivonne Derks is Research Fellow at the Research Department of Behavioural Sciences and Health. She has a background in Health Sciences, Psychology and Clinical Epidemiology, and completed her PhD (2019) at Erasmus Medical Centre Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Ivonne’s research is focussed on the development of eating disorder symptoms in adolescence and identifying shared risk factors between obesity and eating disorders.

About the Lecture: In this lecture, we will explore the ways in which popular culture constitutes a privileged site for LGBTIQ+ teenagers’ identity formation, analysing how the queer protagonists of Netflix’s hit TV show “Sex Education” turn to cinema, graphic novels, music and fashion to find inspiration for the development of their non-normative gender identities, “forbidden” desires and sexual orientations. We will uncover the undeniable parallels between these characters -Eric, Adam, Lily and Ola- and iconic films like "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," "Paris is Burning," or "Alien," along with the influence of queer legends such as David Bowie, Tina Turner, and Marlene Dietrich. In a way, this constitutes a metatextual exploration that reveals how transnational queer teen TV shows -like “Sex Education” itself- serve as beacons, offering role models for LGBTIQ+ youth worldwide. In a society steeped in cisheteronormativity, queer teens often seek affirmation and self-discovery through the kaleidoscope of popular culture. With the popularisation of platforms such as Netflix and HBO, which have recently become champions of diversity and inclusion, queer youth are finally able to see positive representations of queerness and find information about themselves that is not always available in their home and educational environments. Although queer popular culture and its influence on youth will be at the forefront of our discussion, we will also analyse the role of media for the dissemination of (queer) sex education; the promotion of feminist pedagogies throughout the show; and the potential of educational institutions to become sites of queer utopia, something exemplified in the fictional college portrayed in the last season of the show. About the speaker: Lucia Vazquez Rodriguez is a media scholar specialized in feminist and queer approaches to popular culture; in April this year, who joined UCL as a Lecturer in the MA Digital Media: Production, and became a member of the research group ReMAP. Lucia has an MA in Film and Philosophy from King's College London and a PhD in Audiovisual Communication from the Complutense University of Madrid, where they worked in several projects and publications with a research group called GECA (Gender, Aesthetics and Audiovisual Culture), and wrote a thesis on queer Latin American cinema directed by women. Lucia's main areas of interest are Queer and Feminist Screen Studies, Digital Fandom Communities, and Media Literacy, particularly in relation to teenagers, streaming platforms, sexual scripts and gender roles. Lucia is currently working on a book on the uses of haptic (highly sensorial) images within queer contemporary films directed by women, although they have also published extensively (and will continue to do so) about LGBTIQ+ teen TV shows such as “Sex Education”.