“What if all we have is the now? […] the now is generative and worthwhile.” — Dr Élaina Gauthier‑Mamaril

Host Dr Emily Ennis sits down with Dr Élaina Gauthier‑Mamaril – a disabled philosopher of disability and Research Associate on the Wellcome‑funded Anti‑Ableist Research Culture project at the University of Sheffield – to explore podcasting as method, community, and counter‑archive.

In this conversation:

• Podcasting as a research method. From Massively Disabled to Cripping Research Culture, Élaina experiments with sound, affect, and “epistemic brokering” to amplify disabled knowledges and blur the subject/object divide, especially around COVID and long COVID.
• Rigour with care. Podcasting isn’t “less scholarly”, it’s differently-rigorous. Élaina talks positionality, disclosure, and even choosing to leave audible pain in‑track to honour labour and embodiment, while pushing for broader vocal inclusion (accents, speech impairments) in HE audio.
• Access by design. Why transcripts are non‑negotiable, when BSL interpreting is added, and how audio meets listeners in bed, on tough clinic days, or when isolation bites, turning parasocial connection into real community.
• Beyond “academics only”. Inside the Sheffield project’s “third spaces,” including a sector survey with NADSN and webinars (curated with Quiplash CIC) for disabled professional services staff, because research culture is everybody’s work.
• Recognition matters. Podcasting is work, not a weekend hobby: it deserves to be planned, supported, and credited like any other research/engagement output.
• What’s next. A protocol for collaborative podcasting (data, consent, copyright, co‑editing), research on disability doulas and long COVID, and a creative project with Khairani Barokka adapting Annah, Infinite with Indonesian/Javanese voices and community co‑creation.

🎙️ Referenced Podcasts

• Cripping Research Culture podcast
• Massively Disabled podcast
• Accentricity podcast (run by Sadie Ryan)

📚 Books & Publications

• So You Want to Start a Podcast – by Kristen Meinzer
• Black Disability Politics – by Sami Schalk
• Gauthier-Mamaril É. Podcasting as a Recreational Scholarship Praxis. Hypatia. Published online 2026:1-20. doi:10.1017/hyp.2025.10055
• Annah, Infinite – by Khairani Barokka (for the creative project)

🏛️ Projects, Grants, Networks & Organisations

• Wellcome-funded Anti-Ableist Research Culture Project (University of Sheffield)
• National Association for Disabled Staff Networks (NADSN)
• Quiplash (community interest company supporting disability-led events/webinars)

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Research Culture Uncovered podcast. My name is Emily Ennis and I'll be your host today. I am a feminine presenting white person with short curly hair and I use she/they pronouns. I'm joined today by Dr. Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril who is a research associate on the Wellcome-funded anti-ableist research culture iHuman project at the University of Sheffield. Élaina is a disabled philosopher of disability. Her work is anchored in relational feminist Spinozism and engages with disabled knowledges and practices of disability justice. They are currently working on the topic of disability doulas in relation to long COVID and she is also a scholarly podcaster working on developing a co-creative podcasting research method. Élaina can I ask you to introduce yourself as well as provide a brief visual description and pronouns please.

Hi, my name is Élaina and thank you for pronouncing it so well. That was lovely. I appear today as a light-skinned Filipinx woman with short, dark, curly hair. So as you say, I am a philosopher of disability. And for the past two years, I've been working on anti-ableist research culture at the University of Sheffield, which has allowed me to really diversify and expand also my scholarly podcasting practice.

Wonderful, thank you so much for being here today. So this episode has come about through what I'm co-opting as the most ambitious crossover event in history, as I also recently appeared in an episode of your podcast called Cripping Research Culture and I'll share a link to that in our show notes. So I wanted to start today with a question about podcasting. So for you, what role does podcasting play in your work?

So I would say podcasting has various different roles. From a very personal angle, I turned to podcasting towards the end of my PhD and I felt I really needed to find community that I wasn't finding in my physical geographical department. And so I love podcasting and I love listening to podcasts. So I had an idea of what kinds of conversations I wanted to have, but deciding to start a podcast gave me that structure and those kind of like goals to reach out to people I wanted to talk to. And so the idea was basically, I want to have interesting conversations with interesting people and I'll record them and hopefully other people will want to listen. And that kind of pushing myself to learn these skills and giving myself these tasks was really life-giving and generative. And as I started working more with the medium, I discovered that I really wanted to use podcasting as a research method. So with my first research podcast, Massively Disabled, I really explored what we could do with an oral medium, how we could create a soundscape, how we could create an effective engagement. And because my work is on disability and I am a disabled scholar, I really leaned into what sociologist Peter Keogh introduced me to as epistemic brokering and this idea of like positionality, like within the academy, but also in community with disabled people who were also scholars or not, or completely outside of higher education. And I found that podcasting was a really powerful way to literally amplify voices and narratives and challenge who is an expert to speak on disability. And one of the major points I wanted to put forward with Massively Disabled is to blur those lines between who is the subject and object of public health policies in that case, like relating to COVID and long COVID. And I wanted to say like there are public health scientists that have long COVID that are disabled. The same way there are professors who have had their careers changed because they acquired long COVID in addition to other disabilities they already had. So this idea of working in inclusion for me, it's always important to remember that disabled people are already here and not just in an imaginary future of being absorbed into the university. So how are we treating the people who are already here? And I found that podcasting allowed me to experiment with that in a way that I found like traditional peer reviewed articles wouldn't let me.

I mean, you talked a bit about experimentation there and kind of the value of lived experience and you did also talk a little bit about the kind of, I guess, the academic foundations for some of this work. But how did you learn how to do this? Did you have to go to a course? Is this something that, again, like as with a lot of disability work is rooted in lived experience and I'm just see what happens or you know, how did you get to this as a research method? How did you become a practitioner?

Yeah, so as I mentioned, like I love listening to podcasts and some of the podcasters I listened to would talk about kind of the meta aspect of their work. And I remember this podcaster, Kristen Meinzer, wrote a book called So You Want to Start a Podcast and I bought the audio book and that really helped me to see like, okay, who is your intended audience? Also, how do you go about, you know, managing disclosures throughout? And so for her, she wasn't talking about specifically disability, but just like the kind of openness and vulnerability that can be created over a long period with a podcast and its listeners, the kind of parasocial aspects, the kind of community building. So I listened to a lot of podcasts that generated a kind of organic community of people who would then like talk to each other in forums and sometimes in the case of like the Buffering the Vampire Slayer podcast, people would like send baby clothes to each other. Like they would like have like a sort of mutual aid thing. So I saw podcasts as being something that could be very generative also in a very practical and like human side so I wanted to do that and then when it came to the technical things again Kristen Meinzer was very clear about like don't get bogged down and like what is the best microphone like you can in theory like use your phone and record that and start and one of the best pieces of advice was just like just don't wait for it to be perfect just try it out and so I did that and so I looked up how I could record things and just took that leap of contacting people. And when you think about it, you know, obviously it doesn't come easy to everyone, but as you can tell, I'm quite verbose. So like the idea of like talking to people is not super daunting to me. So I was like, okay, well now it'll just be the microphone. And I will do that. It did take a lot of like sitting in discomfort to learn how to edit my own voice. and obviously there was a steep learning curve when it comes to using editing software. But yeah, that is something I just had to put time into. There's no other way around that. I would say after about a year, I don't know if I was approached or if I found out on Instagram or something, but the podcast, Accentricity, that is run by Sadie Ryan at the University of Glasgow, I think at the time she was in Manchester, but she is a linguist and she has a long running podcast and is now like a lead on the Scottish podcasting network and she and her partner who had worked for the BBC were running a free kind of online class workshop with the idea that we would work on segments that would then feature in her series on like migration and like accents and language. So that was like the quid pro quo. Like we would be contributing content to her podcast, but in exchange she and her partner would meet with us individually, regularly to assess like bits of like interviews and editing that we would do. So in that sense, like I did follow a course, but it was a kind of like bartering exchange as opposed to like a paid course.

I love that because I just like the idea that you pay into this community and you get something back, not only in the kind of practical dividends of what you described of getting baby clothes through the community of listenership, but also that you as a podcaster professional can exchange that expertise with other podcasters. And I think what's really interesting to me about this as an approach, as an academic approach, is that it's a diverse research output and obviously that comes with some of those kind of trappings that you're talking about about disclosures where, know, if you're disclosing something in a research interview and then you're pseudonymizing and then you're putting that out in a journal article, that person is protected in a totally different way to a named person being on a podcast or even an anonymized person being on a podcast. So that's really interesting to me in terms of like, it is a different methodological approach to doing the work. But I think what's also interesting to me is just this idea that you've got stuck in, but there's also, there's people doing that same work as well and are committed to it from that community building perspective. I guess the question for me is, just based on what you were saying about this taking time, how did this align with your actual traditional methods of research that are happening at the same time? Did you just say right it's podcasting and I'm just sticking to that or did you feel like they were competing things on your time basically?

I would say the expectation is to do this on top of traditional work. And I had to make a conscious decision at some point, I will be upfront and say, writing is not my preferred medium of expression. So I think gravitating toward more dialogical, conversational, oral ways of shaping knowledge, sharing knowledge, thinking about it is already part of my personality and my personal inclination. I try to be conscious about that now that I'm like doing workshops for other researchers and not everyone has this like natural affinity with that. But as someone living within the current system of higher education, as well as being chronically ill, I have learned to prioritize and like shift my priorities and pivot quite a lot. And it came to a point where I became more selective about the conferences I was attending and about what papers I was writing. And eventually, like right now, it's in press Like it's, it's ready to be published. I have a peer reviewed article about my podcasting practice coming out in Hypatia. But I did that as a result of having produced Massively Disabled. So I tried to like work it within my ongoing spectrum of work. So I'm not duplicating. But everything is trying to like make sense as much as is possible because I have varied research interests. But I guess a combination of at some point I decided I wanted podcasting to be a core part. And so that means that I cannot spend energy doing other things. And I've had to say no to other things. And so that is a risk for sure. But it was also, I had to be realistic about my capacity to sustain the work. And I found that podcasting was such a great way to reconnect with the why of what I want to do with my research. And when nothing is certain, this is the work I wanted to do. Because I know it reaches communities to whom I want to be accountable. So when we all have limited time and energy and nothing is guaranteed, even if I produced 12 more articles and like two books, I'm not guaranteed to have a job. So I was like, what do I want to do now? How do I want to like use the time that is given to me as Gandalf would say? And so I did make that decision and I realised that is scary. Because I have received pushback. Also, I recently heard someone say, oh, I don't like listening to podcasts. I like to have people think through what they want to say. And I was like, what podcasts are you listening to? But I realised this is maybe the perception that people have where like, oh, you just have people on a microphone. They just like chat to their friends, which I'm not knocking on principle because I do like this idea of witnessing people who get on in your ears. I think that can be quite nice. But the podcasts I listen to are by people who do a lot of research or who already know what they're talking about. And then they're coming into a more informal conversation. And so for me, the role of podcasting in research, yes, it will be different from other mediums, but it doesn't mean it has to be completely unrigorous or that we're just, as a reviewer said to me, just asking a random disabled person on the street. But because I get that pushback, I feel I want to keep doing this work because it is disturbing the people who are comfortable with the status quo. And because I've received so much like feedback from other disabled scholars about how this changed the way that they think about their own work. And those are the people I want to serve.

I think there's something very principled in what you've just described but you know in terms of this being a thing that you're doing because you don't know the future and you'd much rather be doing the thing that you love and serving the community that you serve, rather than, you know, just doing a journal article which doesn't necessarily fit within your skillset. I think what's also really interesting about what you've been talking about is, I mean, you even led with this about the kind of democratisation of knowledge that happens through a podcast. You're talking to people who have lived experience and you're talking to them directly, not, you know, through I guess, potentially more abstract research method, you're having a conversation, even if you are just having a conversation with the person on the street, that's a legitimate conversation. I think what podcasts have the power to do is to disrupt that concept of knowledge, which is actually quite a colonial concept of knowledge as well about who is a knowledge holder and what does knowledge look like. So, you know, I'm obviously very pro podcast, I wouldn't be doing a podcast if I wasn't pro podcast, but I think there's something really integral in terms of what you're saying is, you know, this is an unrecognised research methodology, and that has a lot of risks attached to it. But it's also one that's maybe capturing different forms of knowledge, different lived experiences, that the current method of research isn't necessarily getting to. And I guess that kind of leads me on to the question of, for you, how do disability and podcasting interact?

Yeah, so I touched a bit about like my personal reasons. I also think when I'm thinking about people who will be listening, I've consumed a lot of podcasts when I was feeling very ill and when I couldn't do anything else. And so podcasts can be listened to while you're lying in bed in the dark, for example, but they can also accompany you to like the doctor's office and things that are maybe like more emotionally fraught. And disabled people are often very excluded by society and isolated. And when I was talking earlier about the benefits of hearing friendship in your ears, sometimes that that's what keeps you going when in real life, people might stop inviting you to places because they're tired of you turning them down or because, you know, I live a COVID conscious lifestyle, and that's pretty hard in 2026. And so at some point, you want to feel like you are connected to other people and podcasts allow you to do that. So from a very kind of like lived experience perspective, I know the benefits of podcasts, but also I grew up with my best friend being very, very dyslexic. And so back in the day, we would go to the library and get like books on tape, literal cassettes, like CDs and things. And so I was always open to the idea that you can also learn through an audio medium. And when we think about it, we think of lectures, like that's really what it is. You go and you listen to someone. And so this idea that podcasts can be more than just entertainment, they can be a way where you learn about the world. And you can be exposed, to different cultures and people from their own mouth, which I think is very interesting. Like I love reading books and even novels where things have been like abstracted and theorized, but there is something specific about listening, for example, to Ear Hustle, the podcast produced within San Quentin prison in California by incarcerated people. that's a completely different experience than even reading a memoir, for example. So I think in terms of disability, obviously not everyone can hear. So it's not going to be like accessible to everyone. I always try to produce transcripts for every podcast that I do. And currently for Cripping Research Culture, we have the budget to hire a British Sign Language translator. So that is like, obviously not something everyone can do, but I do encourage people if you do have the budget to think about who is accessing your podcast. And so this idea of access is not universal, but I also think it's important to remember, and I did not come up with this and I forget who did. They are a scholar in Canada, I believe, who as they're building a relational citation method. And I've discussed with the author of Black Disability Politics, Sami Schalk, when actually we were both at the Leeds Disability Conference a couple of years ago, where they said, like, how do we cite when we're talking to our friend and they say something really insightful about disability Like, how do we get out of, you say, as these colonial practices of citation and intellectual property and all of these things? And I think podcasting is a good way to explore that with disabled people. And I see my practice as part of the decolonial practice of counter-archiving. So disabled people's lives, like many other marginalised groups, are often only preserved in medical and criminal records, which is obviously a very small and skewed, gives us a very skewed and narrow version of what it's like to be a disabled person across history. And the idea of producing a podcast where people not only consent to having their voice and their name associated with, but they give excited, like enthusiastic consent because we are participating in creating an archive of people's lives. And obviously I've worked on long COVID, so that interacts a lot with health services, but as a philosopher of disability, I'm really open to seeing how disability shapes our whole lives and not just our interactions with healthcare. But so I think there are lots of opportunities for connection and community, but from an academic point of view, understanding how do we honour webs of knowledge that for lots of structural reasons are not being captured by science, with a capital S. And as well, like lots of different cultures around the world do not prioritize the written word the same way that like Anglo American countries and European countries do. And so I work in Philippine philosophy and again, I get pushback saying there's no such thing because there's no like ancient like logic treatise like you could find in like ancient China or ancient India, for example. And so that's not legible to Western philosophy in the same way. But then to say that there are no philosophical cultures or practices is also false. And so I think I never said that we should all only do podcasting and this should be the only way. And I think that is also something I am pushing against this idea that if you come up with an idea, you have to prove to everyone that it's the best idea and everyone should adopt it and we should like expand it to scale and like it should become best practice. I want to be able to say, no, you can and should express yourself in multiple different ways. Like science, the scientific method should continue. Like I'm not saying we should abolish all of these things. But I am saying podcasting is a powerful tool and a powerful practice to allow marginalised people and including disabled people to not only have their voices heard, but to express themselves and find power through that.

I think that's really moving and certainly I was very moved while you were talking because I was just thinking about that real contrast or that tension between what's recorded and what isn't I guess I'm just really struck by hearing what you're saying because it resonates so deeply with me as a disabled person. But I think what resonates with me as a professional, I guess, is what you were saying about you're just offering this as part of the buffet of how we do research, you know, and how we disseminate our research and actually what you're saying is this works for you, this works for the community that you serve and you're not actually here to say let's put science in the bin and it's just interesting to me how many times you said pushback and I'm just I'd be interested to hear a little bit more about what that pushback looks like if you don't mind sharing.

Yeah. mean, it comes in various forms and I don't want to say that all of it is out of malice, if any. I think a lot of it is from discomfort with something new or, you know, I will say it, like, especially men academics whose exposure to podcasts in their minds is maybe like Joe Rogan. And they're like, well, podcasting is extremely harmful. And I was like, well, I agree with you there, but like you can't paint all of podcasting with the Joe Rogan brush. Like that's unfair. Like podcasting is a medium. Lots of terrible things are printed. And I would argue lots of peer reviewed articles are harmful and not good quality scholarship and they're still printed. So it's not like peer review as we know it now is an exact quality filter for everything, but I wouldn't say pushback, but I received like some questions, for example, about how I chose to position myself in Massively Disabled. So I would break the fourth wall in that show. And also about your question about like how disability interacts with podcasting. I chose to be open, for example, when I had to record to stay within the timeline, but I was having extreme pain. And I was like, as I'm editing this, I realised there's pain in my voice and I don't know if anyone else will hear it, but I'm hearing it and it's affecting me. And I chose to leave that in. I put this in the podcast and I said, I'm choosing to leave this in. I could rerecord and put on like a happy and upbeat voice and like try to like do it, but I'm tired. I don't have the energy to rerecord. So it's staying. But yeah, so I would choose to disclose about that or I would say I'm not entirely happy with like the cut of this episode. I wanted to do more, but I can't because of my chronic illness. And I said like, I'm leaving this in to show like the realities of also like the labour. And so when I say I want podcasts to be part of the buffet, as you say. That's also me saying I want it to be recognized as labour and not something you do as a hobby on top of things. And I think that should be true even if you want to podcast because you want to do public engagement and it's not part of research. Like I think that should be factored in to the work people have to do. And as we discussed, it requires sometimes like learning skills that take time and I shouldn't have to do that on the weekend if it's something I'm doing for my job. So it's this idea, I guess, like some people are like, well, I find it inappropriate to talk about myself in this. It should be like a very like professional sense. But also I live in such a bubble where, you know, things, concepts like Crip refusal are something that is like non-controversial. So when I say no to something, people can be like, well, you're not like, you're supposed to like beg us to be here. What are you, what are you doing? So when I said earlier about having to like make decisions about like where I'm going, where I'm not going, what I'm writing, what I'm not writing in order to do podcasting, that comes with some choices and also choosing to address a specific audience. And there is a way where my entire podcasting career in academia could be me explaining what podcasts do to people and I don't want to do that. Like at some point I want to do it for people who already understand and so we can get to the next point. But like I can be professional while disclosing my disability or disclosing how my body, my embodiment is affecting this work. And also the idea of what is good audio. Before we started recording, we were talking about like various ways of recording and you know, it's really important to have quality audio. And I absolutely agree. But for me, it's also important that we diversify the types of voices that we hear and that includes having people with like speech impairments, different accents, and different things like that. And because of being attached to higher education and the point is not to reach the broadest audience and like make the most money and attract sponsors. And so we have this opportunity to be like, Hey, we can reach out to these people who normally are not platformed in a way or not made visible. And I think some people are very uncomfortable with this idea of disabled people being visible. And this idea that, I don't have to ask permission to post this. whilst like I have to wait 18 months to two years to publish anything peer reviewed is seen as like, well, obviously it must be dangerous for lack of a better word, because you're like rushing through this. And I'm like, no, I think it's okay to talk about in-progress ideas or also accept that know what I'm saying here today, might, my opinion might evolve later, but that doesn't mean I don't stand by what I'm saying now. And I think that's part of also like my Crip theory, this idea of embracing the in progress and not only like waiting until I have like a polished element to give because like, what if all we have is the now and it's saying that the now is generative and worthwhile. And we don't have to wait to fit into like a nice diluted, possibly like polished version of what is acceptable in this space.

Yeah, I agree and I was just going to just what you were talking about about kind of not wanting to spend all your time talking about, you know, why we should do podcasts. I guess it's important to talk about the work that you're doing at the moment at Sheffield. And I guess, you know, it'd be great to hear a little bit more about what that looks like and also how you got there.

Yeah. So with the Wellcome Anti-Ableist Research Culture Project, the point was to kind of study the University of Sheffield with an idea that it could give us best practices for the sector and understanding, you know, what is needed in inclusive recruitment, but also research methods and collaborations. So my role is a kind of like meta analytical role. So I'm looking at what my colleagues are producing in their data. And I'm also taking lead on creating what I'm calling like third spaces. So the podcast, Cripping Research Culture is one of those. And then together with the National Association for Disability Staff Networks, I produced a survey that went out to disabled professional staff members because although on research culture, I'm sure you will agree that research culture is like more than the academics that are in it. It's like everyone within the team that supports the research being able to happen. And I think my colleagues rightfully were focusing on disabled researchers, cause that was the remit. But I said like, okay, well, I will try and address the gap of professional service members that are also disabled. And so I worked with NADSN on that survey, put that out and based on the results, I curated with the help of a community interest company, Quiplash, a series of webinars addressing the topics that came up. And so some of the biggest feedback that I got from that was people just like, being in a room with other disabled people, the talks are all led by disabled people of like varying backgrounds and like how restorative like being in that space was. So like, obviously people came for the content and they were interested in that and was relevant to them. But it was like creating a space where we could like dream up more inclusive workplaces was really good. So like, I see like that as a kind of practical thing that I'm doing as well as generating recommendations for the executive board of the University of Sheffield. And I'll be presenting later on this month to the Wellcome Trust. We'll be talking about that. But like how I got there, I would say I was always kind of a misfit in philosophy. I was trained in Canada in a tiny university that used a very literally medieval style of teaching, which means there was an emphasis on a primary texts and like really learning to like crafting and like refining your critical skills using the texts and not relying only on secondary literature, which allowed me to look at things where maybe there wasn't that much like secondary literature, which is what I'm ending up doing now. And that's difficult for academia to understand when we're like, it's only legitimate knowledge if you can cite like a bunch of things. But also part of my training was oral exams. So again, this links back to podcasting maybe and this idea of like my relationship to knowledge. And then when I moved to the UK, it was a huge culture shock where people kept saying that like my two degrees in philosophy were not real philosophy. And, because it's just, it's just a very different culture. like the discipline of philosophy just looks a very different way. People are trained in a different way and you just expect, it's the same discipline. It'll be the same. It was not. And then my PhD was already like a weird combination of like 17th century metaphysics with like feminist relational theory and like critiquing the NHS, like shared decision-making guidelines in a clinical setting. And so people did not know what to do with me. So I was told repeatedly that I was not doing real philosophy. And then it just so happened that the jobs I've had are really steered me into an interdisciplinary field. So I worked in this for the Centre of Biomedicine, Self and Society at the University of Edinburgh. So I was in a faculty of medicine, fully in a Faculty of Medicine. But that is what allowed me to do Massively Disabled because I was part of a really like generative collaborative space with like anthropologists, science and technology scientists, law scholars, epidemiologists, historians. And so I was able to like really evolve in that interdisciplinary space. And meanwhile, parallel to this, I was like developing my interest in disability justice and really like reading up on that, which is like mostly outside of academia. And then I came to like critical disability studies at Sheffield with people again, who were like trained in like British disability studies, which is again, very different from disability justice. and so there was another culture shock there. And I guess like, I, this is why I really focus on my identity or my positionality as an epistemic broker, because I feel I've had to translate myself so many times across so many different cultures, that I, I can be that person that comes in from the outside and it's like, you've been doing this for a while. Is it working out for you? Should we change this? Like, should we experiment with that? So I think that is an asset that I bring. But it's not easy. I think academia and like the job market and the way funders are structured right now really on paper encourage interdisciplinarity. But then in practice, when you have such an eclectic background such as mine, it is difficult for me to find like a pigeonhole. So I would say like my life is very exciting and that doesn't mean there's like lots of like stability in that.

I mean, it is fascinating. I too come from an interdisciplinary background, probably not as interdisciplinary as you, but I remember being told, it's time to pigeonhole yourself, it's time to work out what your sellable academic identity is. And I was like, oh, I don't really want to do that, actually. I found that very challenging. And in a way, you can have lots of opportunities and you can also have none, by virtue of having too many. I guess that leads me on to a slightly more tricky question, which is what's next? And what does the future look like for you? Maybe not necessarily immediately, but is there anything that you really want to achieve with this work and with your future work?

Yeah, so as you said in the introduction, like I really would love to develop a protocol for collaborative podcasting as a research method. And to do that, I need to be able to like work with people and develop that. Like, so it's the podcasting thing of like, you have to do it to learn. Like the experiment is to do the collaborative podcast. Because that's very challenging in terms of like who holds the data, who has like the copyright, like who gets to say like I want my segments removed, who gets executive decisions around like the design of the podcast, etc. But those are all things that I think is very important because I want to work in this kind of counter-archival manner. And so I would love to do my work on long COVID doulas. And I specifically want to engage with early HIV activism and the knowledges of care that are there and then place that in dialogue, not a direct comparison, but like in dialogue with the movement supporting COVID long haulers right now. And that's a very like expansive project. And I really hope I get the funding to be able to do that, but I'm also experimenting with podcasting as a creative practice. So I'm putting together an Arts Council England bid with Indonesian writer and artist, Khairani Barokka and to take her book, Annah, Infinite, which is a history about like, pain and being disbelieved and also, you know, brown bodies and gender throughout like art history. Like I want to create something and then bring in Indonesian voice actors and translators and have Javanese and have Indonesian spoken, like translated excerpts from the book. And then hopefully then presentations of the podcast to Indonesian British communities and Indonesian communities in Indonesia and the diaspora and like have their takes on like their reception of the podcast have them give them the opportunity to contribute excerpts of themselves and like stories of themselves and then produce another series of three episodes once it's like gone through the community so it's like a commentary on like translation and on like embodiment and like knowledge. And so like that's my other side. Like I really like I've come to see podcasting as a creative medium. So I'm not a painter, I'm not a photographer, but I think podcasting and like the soundscapes you can create can be art as well. So that is also something I would love to explore. And I mean, ideally, I want to be in a position where I can help others produce and I can be kind of that mentor to help them get their ideas off the ground and to help them take their own projects and do that. So I guess like in an ideal world, I want my own media company, but.

Well who knows, who knows, let's watch this space. Well thank you so much Élaina for your time. Is there anything that you want to add, anything that we've not covered before we finish for today?

No, just thank you so much for inviting me. It was a joy to have you on Cripping Research Culture. And I'm just so happy that other podcasts on research culture exist and that they can be a kind of evergreen resource, as the industry says. So that people like now and maybe in 10 years time will discover a specific episode that really captures them and it really helps them at that moment and finds them and I think that's a beautiful thing that we don't know always the impact that we have but that it really does reach thousands of people and that is nothing to be shy about.

I love the idea of an evergreen resource. I've been referring to it as a legacy resource which always feels a bit gross because it implies you know some kind of having children and hierarchy and stuff But yeah thank you so much for your time, Élaina, and thank you everyone for listening to this podcast. I hope it's been enlightening and interesting. I certainly found it very enlightening and very interesting and I feel like I've made loads of little notes of how to be a better podcaster and how to be a better research culture manager and how to be a better person. So thanks so much Élaina for your time and speak to you all soon listeners.