PsychologiCALL season three taster, and a new host!

PsychologiCALL is back for season three, with a new host!

Louisa is an autistic academic working at the university of Reading. In this trailer episode, she talks to Sue about the podcast so far, the podcast handover, and her plans for season three.

You can find out more about Louisa and her research here, and you can find her on Twitter @ljthomas1991

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The blog post we mentioned in today's trailer episode contains advice on starting a PhD, and you can find it here.

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Tune back in for the first episode of season three of PsychologiCALL on 10th January 2022!

Transcript

Louisa: 0:05

Hello, welcome to PsychologiCALL. Today we've got a holiday treat for you because we're here to tell you that PsychologiCALL is coming back for season three. If you've listened to the first two seasons with Sue Fletcher-Watson, it might come as a surprise to you to hear that this voice isn't actually one that you're used to. So hello, welcome. I'm Louisa Thomas. I'm an autistic academic at the University of Reading, and I'm taking over from Sue as podcast host for season three. So here we sue today to chat a little bit about the podcast. Hello, Sue.

Sue: 0:36

Hi Louisa

Louisa: 0:39

How are you?

Sue: 0:41

I am not too shabby. Thank you very much, though I did manage to get myself a little spot of COVID. So me and my family are in recovery mode. But in lots of ways, it feels like Christmas time has just started early in our house, because we're all stuck inside eating comfort food and watching TV in the middle of the afternoon. So it's it's not all bad. I have to say.

Louisa: 1:04

That sounds pretty fantastic. Actually, I'm quite jealous, you sort of started the festivities early. Fantastic. So I guess I'll start I'll go all the way back to the beginning of the podcast and start by asking you, why did you start the podcast in the first place?

Sue: 1:22

Well, I mean, you know, because of the pandemic, in lots of ways, right at the time. It was sort of late spring 2020, I think when I started recording episodes, and it just felt like so many of the usual opportunities we had for academic discourse had just been snatched away. And I guess I was thinking about a little bit about students, undergraduates, masters, PhD students, and the sort of, you know, departmental seminar series or, or, you know, other opportunities to hear from researchers about the kind of real life nuts and bolts of research, those had all sort of gone. And at the time, we hadn't got that good at creating online alternatives, you know, there was a real sort of empty space. And the other bit that I was really missing personally, was essentially coffee break chats at conferences, you know, the sort of, the sort of informal conversations you have with other academics where you say, what have you been working on, or we've got this great, new postdoc, and she's doing this fab project, I'm so excited about it. And it's just so fun to hear in people's own words about the work that they're doing. And not just have the sort of formal version that's written up in the paper. And I think that's a lot. What I wanted to recreate with the podcast was those informal conversations that bring a piece of research a bit more to life.

Louisa: 2:59

Yeah, yeah. I think that's one of probably one of my favourite things about the podcast as well, to be honest, I know you go to a conference, you can ask questions and things at a conference, but they're not the sort of chatty questions that you do get, like you say, when you have the coffee breaks, you don't sort of get the same kind of level of conversation in conference question and answers if you've got a conference online. So I definitely say that's one of my favourite things about the podcast. So the way you set it up was successful.

Sue: 3:25

Thank you Louisa, you are so kind.

Louisa: 3:29

And I guess so I was going to say, did you actually enjoy doing the podcast as much as you thought you would? So I feel it's a good time to ask that question.

Sue: 3:39

I really loved it. I'm, I'm quite a chatty person. And I'm lucky enough to have some wonderful friends who are also developmental psychologists and, and I admit, I did indulge myself a little bit by speaking to some of them, which was just a huge treat. But I also tried to go a little bit outside of my circle. And so I got to chat to new researchers about work that I had really no knowledge of at all, and to get to meet new people that way. So that was really, that was, you know, both of those kinds of episodes, were just a real treat. And it was very, it was very fun. I think we had some laughs and, and the, the feedback we got from listeners was great. So I was just thrilled by the whole thing, actually, I think it went as well as I could have hoped.

Louisa: 4:36

Fantastic. I can confirm as a listener as well, that they are very enjoyable to listen to. So and I guess the ones where you are chatting to friends as well. It's quite nice to listen to people just having a nice chat, isn't it? It's quite nice to have in the background sometimes when you're doing things you're having your breakfast in the morning, so I think chatting to friends on a podcast is great anyway,

Sue: 4:56

Yeah, and I think that informal tone was really important, not least because I do not have any fancy podcast recording equipment, or any editing skills, and I was literally phoning people, hence the name of the podcast, which was meant to sort of prepare people for the, you know, this is not studio level sound quality that you're getting. And so that was all that sort of fit together, you know, the kind of chatty tone and the sort of slightly rough, rough and ready production values, but I hope people feel, you know, they're getting something authentic. That way, it's not a really polished, you know, kind of output. It really is a peep, a peek behind the curtain of of real research, I think.

Louisa: 5:46

yeah, it's nice like and probably a good example of the fact that it's not studio recorded podcast, just like the my guinea pigs have chosen this exact moment to start nibbling loads of cardboard. So apologies to the listeners, if they can hear that there's definitely not usually guinea pigs in a studio. But they are. They've just woken up. So

Unknown: 6:06

definitely

Sue: 6:06

Welcome to the podcast guinea pigs. Excellent addition.

Louisa: 6:10

Yeah, it's an excellent addition. Yes, they said, Hi. And I guess you're saying going on about how much you enjoyed it, and how fun it was and everything. So why did you want to hand over the podcast?

Sue: 6:25

Well, I guess a couple of reasons. So one was just just sort of time and resources, I definitely think I am better at finding time for things that are new. I have the kind of personality or the kind of, I don't know, motivational drives or something where I will, you know, force myself to make time for new things that I'm excited about. And I'm less good at maintenance, I think. But also, I was really aware of the limitations of a podcast that were just presented by me. And it was going to be driven by my interests, and my networks, and so on. And I thought it would be a really interesting thing to see if someone else would like to take over as host. And they might do something slightly different with it reach a slightly different group of people to interview a slightly different audience. And so I was just just thrilled Louisa when you picked up the bait.

Louisa: 7:27

Yeah, I was thrilled when I saw the tweet saying that you were looking for a new host. I was like, Well, this is really it took me a few weeks to email you back, actually, because I had a bit of a busy time with working. But I was very excited when I saw that Tweet as well. So I'm glad that you were also excited, though, that I replied, that's good.

Sue: 7:47

Yeah, I mean, I think it's absolutely been perfect. And I just, I'm just really happy that you're taking it over. And we'll talk a bit about why in a moment, I think. And I also feel like, you know, you can host it for as long as you want to, but if in the future, it passes on to another host, that would be a wonderful thing too, you know, I don't feel that it needs to, I don't feel a strong sense of sort of ownership, you know, I like the idea of, of, of that baton being passed on a little bit. And I suppose we see that in, you know, all sorts of positions in academia, you know, whether it's a head of department or an editor of a journal, or the president of a academic society, you know, we tend to have people do these jobs for a period of time and pass them on to the next kind of fresh pair of eyes or, or pair of ears in this case. And I like that. I really like that as a principle.

Louisa: 8:51

Yeah. Yeah, that sounds really good. Very good reason for passing it on. I'm not sure how I'd quite like to probably carry on after this season as well. But if anyone's particularly excited about carrying it on, as well, if anyone else when you were listening, you think that you might want to take it over one day, let us know. Because that will be always gonna be you.

Sue: 9:09

No one's gonna boot you off. Louisa, don't worry, we're not planning your retirement already. That would be rather mean! But it's, it's also it's easier sometimes isn't it to go for something like this? If you think to yourself, I don't have to do it forever. You know, you can take a bit of a gamble. And so I think that also makes it easier for people to to experiment and try something new. If they know. It's not a lifelong commitment if they don't want it to be.

Louisa: 9:38

Yeah, that's a good point as well. Yeah, I guess the sort of stage of career that I'm at as well, a lot of the jobs that I'm going to be doing aren't kind of, they're not lifelong commitments, or they're sort of in a postdoc role at the moment. So you sort of move through them after a couple of years. So yeah, moving on with the podcast and passing it to somebody else makes sense too, but I'll I'll probably be here for a while. So there's your there's your prior warning.

Sue: 10:00

Excellent. So shall I ask you a little bit about your research and what you brought you to this podcast from Louisa?

Louisa: 10:12

Yeah. So at the moment, I'm doing a postdoc at Reading. So I'm working with Dr. Cathy Manning. And we're researching sensory processing in autism with a focus on visual processing in children. Prior to that, I did like an undergraduate degree. And I actually specialised in psychology development and developmental disorders. It's been something I'm always really excited about, I did a project in my second year that focused on word learning in autism as well. So that was kind of the first paper that came out of my interests. I ended up kind of going a little bit out of developmental during my PhD and actually worked with adults for a while, but did always want to come back to developmental, which is why I've done that now, and also why I really excited about doing the podcast because it means that I can maybe learn about some of the things that I've missed while I was doing my PhD and like projects and research that people have been doing in the last couple of years. So yeah, bit of a selfish reason, really, for doing it to learn about what people are doing and get excited about developmental psychology.

Sue: 11:11

I think that is a great reason, I don't think you need to feel it selfish at all. Tell me, tell me why you love development psychology. So I love I love. I love working with children apart from anything else, you know, sitting down and collecting data with kids is always an adventure. And I love the complicatedness of development and the fact that something you know about one stage of life or one point in someone's life, or not necessarily hold true six months or a year or five years later, and and that constant shifting, understanding is such an exciting challenge of the discipline, I think, but what what what do you find exciting about developmental psychology?

Louisa: 11:58

I think actually, now that you've said that all of that change, and so many different things that shift around that is probably one of my favourite parts about it as well, to be honest, but there's just so many different things to learn, and so many different ways that you can apply research in children that is just so interesting to me. And, yeah, also, I'm obviously really interested in kind of neurodiversity and that sort of aspect of development as well. So I said at the beginning as well, I'm autistic. And I've always been really interested in conducting research with autistic people as well. So I really like the development that that and development crossing over basically, that was a really bad sentence, wasn't it? Sorry. But yeah, there's just so many different topics that you can look into, as you said, as well, I really love working with children. It's it's so much fun. So lots of different things that I like about developmental psychology. And I'm really excited to chat to some more people and learn about other things that people are doing. So I'm just excited in general about

Sue: 12:58

Your excitement really comes across Louisa. And I think this is how I know you're going to be an amazing podcast host. Is there anything particular that you are hoping to do with the podcast or any, anyone particular you want to talk to or anyone particularly want to reach with the podcast?

Louisa: 13:17

Well, I wanted to kind of I do want to have some kind of people that have been working in developmental psychology for longer, but I wanted to kind of bring a bit more of a focus on to early career research and research that's done by people that earlier on in their career. So all of the episodes I've recorded so far, are actually with early career researchers, I've got some plans with other people are at different stages in their career, but I really wanted to kind of highlight people at different stages of their research careers. So that's one of the things that I'm hoping to achieve with the podcast. And also, I'm trying to get on guests that use a big variety of different methodologies so that people, people that are listening can learn about lots of different ways of doing research and lots of different populations and things that people are accessing, as well. So being quite broad in the people that I speak to. But yeah, I did want to bring in a bit more of a focus on early career research as well into the podcast so and then, guests that I've had so far have spoken about really fun things such as play in kids, risky and adventurous play, and social media risks and benefits. And then there's a really lovely, qualitative study that I've spoken about as well about autistic people's sensory experiences, which was also super interesting to hear about. And I've got a few more recordings in January that I'm super excited about as well. But yeah, lots to come. I won't say any more because I want it to be exciting when it's released. But just a little hint, well, what's on the way

Sue: 14:47

I assure you have whet people's appetites. I'm certainly this is actually the first time I've it's occurred to me that one of the big treats that await me now is that I get to become a listener of the podcast

Louisa: 14:58

Oh yeah!

Sue: 14:59

So that's gonna be so fun. Yeah, really looking forward to that. Normally I'm listening, you know, and just thinking, Oh God, what an awful cackle I just made in that [laughs] here I go again. So it'll be really nice to listen to it and not have that layer of self consciousness. I can just enjoy the science. It'll be great into it and

Louisa: 15:21

editing it myself. I'm like all that was a loud laugh. Sorry, listeners.

Sue: 15:28

Absolutely, but better than no loss at all. I'm sure.

Louisa: 15:31

That means you're having a good time, doesn't it? So that's perfect.

Sue: 15:36

So before we finish up, one of the things that I always used to ask guests on the podcast was about their research their advice for listeners, and you've already mentioned that you're in this wonderful postdoc with absolutely excellent Cathy Manning. And trying to kind of, you know, include more early career researchers in the podcast. And so I just wondered from that perspective, you know, for people who maybe haven't set out on their PhD journey, or for current PhD students, what would be your words of wisdom.

Louisa: 16:13

So many, in fact, and so many shared from the people I did my PhD with, that I have a blog post on this exact topic. So maybe you could seek that out as well, it's on my website, I'll add it in the podcast description. But um, I guess one of my main things that I would advise people to do is to really set up kind of a supportive network of friends and other people that you're doing your PhD with, very early on, and also helpful for collaboration and things in the future. And if you get stuck with the coding, or something that somebody else knows how to do, it's great to have those people around you so you can help each other. So one of my kind of, I guess, main pieces of advice would be to start very early on kind of setting up a network of people that are excited about similar things. And yeah, because it's useful, supports you if anything gets difficult, it was useful to have a network when the pandemic happened, and no one could see each other in person. So that was very useful. PhD network. Yeah.

Sue: 17:15

Absolutely. And I can testify that some of those relationships really, really last, in fact, Holly Joseph was someone I interviewed on the podcast, and she and I shared an office, where we were doing our PhDs. And that's, you know, still a really wonderful friendship and an amazing source of support. And I sometimes think about people working in my field, who were sort of doing their PhDs around the same time as me of being like, sort of academic siblings, you know, that we've all sort of grown up together or something. And it's, it's such a lovely source of, of comfort when things are tough. And advice when you're stuck and all of those things. So, yeah, strongly second that advice? Yes, that's great.

Louisa: 18:03

Yeah, I mean, two of my recordings already, I was people that I've done my PhD with, and one of them I sat next to her in the office for for the entire time, we were actually in person in the office. So very close PhD friend. But yes, some super interesting research coming out of people coming out from people that I did my PhD with, as well. So there's a few conversations from people that I know quite well from my PhD, which actually wasn't that long ago. I only finished this year.

Sue: 18:31

Yeah, but that's a friendship forged in in pretty fiery furnace, isn't it? You know, for you know, that gonna be a friendship that'll love?

Louisa: 18:39

Absolutely. Yeah. Just good to know. Oh, actually, I guess I guess now, I should probably say when I'm planning to release the podcast. So what's a trailer chat without any knowledge of when it's coming? So I'm going to start releasing them weekly. The first one is going to be released. I think it's the first kind of week of academic term, which starts on the 10th of January for most people. Is that the same for you as well, the 10th.

Sue: 19:05

Yeah, that's the same for us. Yeah.

Louisa: 19:07

So I'm going to release them on the 10th of January on, which is a Monday, they're going to be released every Monday as well. After that in the morning, I'm going to release them all at 7am. So if you want to kind of listen to a podcast with your morning breakfast or on the way into work, if you are going into work, they're released nice and early for you. So yeah, first week of term first podcast. Very exciting.

Sue: 19:29

So exciting, Louisa, and to all the listeners, I know that I'm leaving you in incredibly good hands, as you can already tell from this little taster episode. I was thrilled when Louisa got in touch and I think she's going to be an amazing podcast host, not least because as you told me earlier, Louisa, you have always wanted to be you wanted to be a radio DJ, is that right?

Louisa: 19:55

When I was a kid I always had like a real urge to be one of those people that's on a really chatty radio show and then every so every so often it's like here's, here's a song I've loved for a long time and then put some music on and then chat to some nice exciting people. So I've always wanted to do that. But I was always a little bit too shy when I was younger. So now that I'm older, and I'm excited to do something like this, it's actually really nice. It does feel a little bit like coming full circle because I always wanted to do something like this was a very shy child. So chatty, but shy.

Sue: 20:26

Well, from what I can tell, you seem to have moved on from that or at least when you're sufficiently motivated by your love of the topic, then your shyness is set to one side, that's that's it. So should we finish with a little Merry Christmas to all our listeners?

Louisa: 20:43

Absolutely. Yes. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Sue: 20:48

And have a wonderful Christmas time. And I hope you get to see some friends and family despite the slightly tricky Omicron related circumstances. And there will be a delicious podcasty treat waiting for you in the new year. And yeah, just thank you, Louisa. And good luck for season three of PsychologiCALL.

Louisa: 21:17

Thank you very much. I'm very much looking forward to it!

Sue: 21:24

Bye!

Louisa: 21:24

Bye! I hope you all enjoyed our little chat, to introduce season three of PsycholoiCALL and if you're looking forward to the next episode, make sure to tune in again on the 10th of January.