Academic Podcasting Workshop Generates Wide Variety of New Programs

As part of a recent initiative, the Center for Media, Data and Society (CMDS) offered a pilot workshop on academic podcasting. “We want to create a vanguard of podcasters at CEU and build a community here,” explained course lead and CMDS Research Fellow Ian Cook. Fellow course instructor Dumitrita Holdis added, “We have a longer term plan to develop a course that would be offered for academic credit at CEU.”

Academic podcasting is a form of content creation that allows creators “to foster new communities of practice, open academic knowledge, and change the way research is imagined,” Cook said. Compared to other digital media such as video, podcasts are relatively simple and cheap to produce and have the potential to reach a wide audience online.

Over the course of five sessions, workshop participants analyzed podcast models, debated best practices, and created the first episode of their very own podcast. “The workshop covers all essential skills for running an academic podcast. From developing the structure to handling the equipment to sound editing we get everything we need to successfully start our own projects,” commented Jan Bröker, course participant and scientific coordinator at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) at CEU. After completing the course, Bröker is launching a podcast featuring IAS research fellows.