Exeter Postgraduate Researcher Podcast

About Exeter Postgraduate Researcher Podcast

A PGR podcast, by PGRs for PGRs. Our PGR presenters interview a range of guests to explore the topics other PGRs want to know about. The episodes mix personal perspectives with practical advice. These interviews were conducted over MS Teams to enable more people to participate.

Publisher

exeterpostgraduateresearcherpodcast

Category

business · education

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

15 Aug 2023

Latest episode

7 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

8 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   7 Sept 2026

   International Student Experience

   To kick off our new series, PGR Pratiti Ghosh asks fellow international PGR Yanira Becerra Ortiz about her experience of studying in the UK. Useful links PGR International Student Support at University of Exeter PGR Study Space Academic and social networks at University of Exeter

2. 

   8 Dec 2025

   Industry or Academia- which is right for me?

   PGR Sylvie Agnello asks Dr Cédric Mesnage (Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Exeter) and Dr Ana Miguel Cruz (Regional Medical Advisor for a pharmaceutical company and an Exeter alumna) about their experiences of working in academia and industry.

3. 

   10 Nov 2025

   Building a PGR Community

   PGR Matilda Nightingale talks to PGR Tasha Hammond (Founder of Postgraduate Peer Group and Co-Chair and Events Officer (Cornwall) for Exeter Wellbeing Network) about the importance of building a PGR community to help the wellbeing of PGRs and how you can get involved. Trigger warning: This episode contains discussions around mental health and mention of suicidal thoughts Useful Links PGR Health and Wellbeing: Health and Wellbeing | Doctoral College | University of Exeter Exeter Wellbeing Network: Exeter Wellbeing Network | Equality, Diversity and Inclusion | University of Exeter Cornwall Wellbeing Network: Cornwall Wellbeing Network | Equality, Diversity and Inclusion | University of Exeter

4. 

   13 Oct 2025

   How to make the most of a conference

   PGR Aileen Kimuhu talks to Professor Stacey Hynd, Dean of Postgraduate Research & the Doctoral College at University of Exeter, for advice how to handle conferences whether you're attending or presenting- including the best ways of networking to form useful connections. Useful Links Researcher Development- Making the most of conferences: Making the most of conferences > Researcher Development

5. 

   15 Sept 2025

   Returning to University- Perspectives from Mature Students

   In our first episode of this brand new series, PGR Kate Werran will be talking to Exeter alumna Dr Pankhuri Singh about their experiences of returning to university as a mature student- the highs, the challenges and insights into the unique perspectives that mature students bring. Useful Links: Exeter Mature Student Society Exeter Students' Guild Societies Falmouth & Exeter Students' Union Societies

6. 

   15 Apr 2024

   Episode 3- Open Research- Prof Sabina Leonelli (Professor of Philosophy and History of Science)

   Prof. Sabina Leonelli (Professor of Philosophy and History of Science) talks to Dr Chris Tibbs, Research Data Officer at University of Exeter about open research, the use of Artificial Intelligence in research, and the importance of understanding the diversity of research environments when implementing open research practices. Podcast transcript Chris Tibbs:Hello and welcome. I'm Dr Chris Tibbs and I'm the University Research Data Officer, part of the open research team based in the library here at the University of Exeter. My role involves providing support for researchers across the university as they work with and manage their research data, and today I have the pleasure to be joined by Professor Sabina Leonelli, a Professor of Philosophy and History of Science at the University of Exeter. So welcome, Sabina. Just to start, would you like to tell us a little bit about the research area that you work in? Sabina Leonelli:Thank you and hello everyone. So, I'm interested in the dynamics of research and research processes. Why is it that people who work in science use the methods that they use, handle data in particular ways, decide to publish in particular ways? Why do they choose certain research goals, and how does that occur historically but also conceptually? And what are the social implications of those choices? Chris Tibbs:That's very interesting. So you're really looking at these sort of different approaches and the different methodologies that different researchers are taking and that's very interesting because obviously different research areas will have different approaches and methodologies that they use. Now one thing that I noticed that you're very interested in, based on your web profile, is obviously open science and openness in research, and the European Commission and the United Nations, among others, all use this term of open science and just so that everyone listening is clear, open science is the approach to research based on openness and co-operative working, and it really emphasises the sharing of knowledge, results and the tools as widely as possible. But I just wanted to point out also that obviously these approaches can apply to all research disciplines, not just science. And so, for example, we are the open research team. And so, I tend to regard open research and open science as synonymous. So, I just wanted to get your take on this, Sabina. Do you see these as separate terms, or do you use them interchangeably? Sabina Leonelli:I also tend to use them interchangeably, but I think it is very unfortunate that it’s the term open science that has gotten so much mileage in the English language because in the English language we are aware of the fact that it does tend to be taken to refer to the natural sciences, more rarely to the social sciences, and never to the humanities and the arts. And this is different for lots of other languages. I mean, most, I guess famously the term wissenschaft in German tends to encompass all of the research domains, including humanities and the arts. I’m very partial to that, partly because I think that we're in a moment where research is so interdisciplinary and the boundaries between domains are so blurred, that actually making strict distinctions between what counts as a humanist approach, and what counts as a natural science approach, or a mathematical approach is becoming more and more difficult. As of course in history it has been very difficult throughout. So yeah, so I'm very partial to the use of the idea of open research in English, but of course we tend to use a lot the term open science too, because this is, as you were saying, very well recognised by policymakers and by funding bodies and a lot of people working in academia more generally. Chris Tibbs:OK. Well, thank you for explaining that. And again, the reason I just wanted to confirm this is because I want to ensure that everyone listening can be clear that what we mean by the term open science a

7. 

   16 Nov 2023

   Episode 2- Open Research- Dr Gavin Buckingham (Associate Professor in Public Health and Sport Sciences)

   Dr Gavin Buckingham (Associate Professor in Public Health and Sport Sciences) talks to Dr Chris Tibbs, Research Data Officer at University of Exeter about the different types of research data he works with and best practices for managing research data during your project. Podcast transcript Chris Tibbs:Hello and welcome. I'm Dr Chris Tibbs and I'm the University of Research Data Officer, part of the open research team based in the library here at the University of Exeter. My role involves supporting researchers across the university as they work with and manage their research data, and so this episode is going to be all about research data and how best to look after it and manage it during your project. And to discuss all of this, today I have the pleasure to be joined by Dr Gavin Buckingham, an Associate Professor in Public Health and Sport Sciences here at the University of Exeter. So just to start with Gavin, would you like to tell us a little bit about your research and the different types of data that you work with? Gavin Buckingham:Hi, there, Chris. Yeah, I'm a cognitive psychologist by training, and I'm interested in human perception and human motor control. And I've been looking at this in the context of measuring the movements and forces people apply to pick objects up, and more recently I've been looking at this in the context of immersive virtual reality as well. Now, most of this data takes the form of pretty simple time streams, time series of data, so numbers representing forces or positions of things in multiple dimensions, and their expression over time. So many thousands of lines of data potentially that we then take maybe the largest value or the value at some critical other time points and that reflects some aspect of human behaviour. So that pretty simply is really what it is that we deal with here. Chris Tibbs: So thinking about all those types of data that that you're working with, I mean you mentioned, like numerical time series data. I just want to point out that, you know, data can also mean a wide variety of other types of data and many people might not think that they work with data. But generally, when I refer to data, you know, I'm thinking about any sort of information, evidence, materials that are being collected and used for that research. So I’d just like to hear your thoughts on, so when you're thinking about your data and why it's important that you look after your data and you manage your data in terms of helping your research and also then potentially making that data available. Gavin Buckingham: Yeah, it's a really interesting question because the pipeline that goes from the stuff that comes out of the apparatus that I used to capture people's data to the things that are subsequently reported in the paper, that's a pretty lengthy pipeline that has many different steps. And those steps can be fairly clearly articulated, but being able to show the consequences of each of those steps, I think is a really key part in terms of people being able to eventually understand your data and make sense of it and use it in other sorts of ways and I really feel that's the narrative I feel most passionately about in many ways. I'm perhaps, slightly selfishly, I'm not so interested in other people finding mistakes that are present in my data, God forbid, but I'm more interested in this resource that was collected that could potentially be a useful thing for other people in ways that I cannot even really imagine. That for me is the really big value I see in my dataset and I work with clinical populations. I work with children, with older adults, typically developing university aged people, all of whom have interesting ways that they interact with the world around them that you know could feed into hitherto unforeseen mechanisms or rehabilitation or technological advances and, you know, I really see sort of the value of data just sitting there waiting for someone to be able to harvest in tha

8. 

   15 Aug 2023

   Episode 1- Open Research- Dr Eilis Hannon (Senior Research Fellow in the Complex Disease Epigenetics Group at the University of Exeter Medical School)

   Dr Chris Tibbs, Research Data Officer at University of Exeter, discusses research data and how best to manage that data during your project with Dr Eilis Hannon, Senior Research Fellow in the Complex Disease Epigenetics Group at the University of Exeter Medical School. Podcast transcript Chris Tibbs: Hello and welcome. I'm Dr Chris Tibbs and I'm the University of Research Data Officer, part of the Open Research team based in the library here at the University of Exeter. So my role involves supporting researchers across the university as they work with and manage their research data, and so this episode is going to be all about research data and how best to manage that data during your project. And to discuss all of this today, I have the pleasure to be joined by Dr Eilis Hannon, a senior research fellow in Clinical and Biomedical Sciences here at the University of Exeter. So Eilis, would you like to tell us a little bit about your research, what it involves and the different types of data that you work with? Eilis Hannon:Yes. Well, thank you very much for inviting me along today. So I'm based in the complex disease epigenetics group and we have a group of mixed modalities. We've got wet lab scientists and dry lab scientists, like myself. So we generate and analyze quite a lot of genomic data. So we're primarily interested in the brain and modelling gene regulation in the brain and we're in a really exciting time where there are so many different technologies and experiments that we can take advantage of,that the quantity of data we've started to generate has just kind of exploded. So from one single sample, we can have kind of, you know, be 4, 5, 6 different experiments and kind of layers of data. And so what I'm quite interested in doing is trying to integrate those different layers together. So a lot of what I'm working with is experimental data, but because a lot of these technologies are quite new, we're often developing new methods to analyze them in parallel. And so what we also do sometimes is simulate data where we kind of know what it looks like. We know what the outcome should be to kind of test and develop methods. So it's quite a broad spectrum of different data type. Chris Tibbs:Yeah. So you mentioned it there, right? So you maybe have simulated data, you've experimental data, and so I just wanted to pick up on the point here when we're talking about data and this obviously might mean different things to different people. And so if you're listening to this discussion and thinking, oh well, I don't work with data or this doesn't apply to me, then I just want to really make clear that when I refer to data or research data, it really means all of the information or the evidence or the materials that are generated or collected or being used for the research, andso that we're clear about data and what it refers to. Why is it so important to manage this data effectively? I mean, you talked about you're producing a large quantity of data, so I'm guessing that's one of the reasons why it's important to look after it. Eilis Hannon:Yes. So from my point of view, efficiency in terms of processing that data in, I mean you know if it wasn't organised in a kind of sensible or a kind of pre-planned format, then it would be incredibly challenging to work with, so from you know, we take advantage of the high performance computing available at the University and so to do that efficiently, we need to kind of have some pre-described format for the data. But there's also ethical implications. So, you know, we're working on data generated ultimately from a piece of human tissue. So we have requirements in terms of how we look after that data, what we do with it. Who uses it and how? So we need to make sure that you know our data is organized that such that those requirements can be met. But also, you know, one of the really nice things about what we do is from one experiment you can answer lots and lots of different researc

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Spotify

5.0 / 5

2 ratings