Half Time Scholars

On this episode, we meet Alexandra Zimbatu, a customer experience and service researcher, completing a joint PhD programme between Queensland University of Technology (Australia) and Maastricht University (Netherlands). Her research explores the role of anticipation for wellbeing, and how service organizations and individuals alike can support positive temporal experiences. Having previously worked in public policy as the Assistant Director of Service Design, Alexandra’s career has been driven by the belief that marketing can be applied as a force for social good. Using aged care, retirement villages and even the COVID-19 pandemic as illustrative contexts, Alexandra’s PhD research uncovers the importance of diversity within one’s temporal landscape, and the avenues that can be collectively pursued to impact the textures of time. Beyond simply ‘looking forward to it!’, her work begins to articulate how anticipation can be a powerful process for supporting one’s sense of agency in contexts of constraint.

In this episode, we explore the intersection of renewable energy, agriculture, and climate resilience.

We’ll look at how solar-powered irrigation and agrivoltaics could transform rice cultivation in Sri Lanka.

And we’ll discuss how clean energy solutions can support sustainable agriculture, rural development, and a more resilient future.

Today, we’re joined by Ayumini Pathirage Don, whose research examines Solar-Powered Irrigation Systems for Rice Cultivation in Sri Lanka.

Welcome to Half Time Scholars - On this episode we feature, Tooba Rauf is a doctoral researcher at UCL's Institute of Education, supported by the Doctoral Centenary Scholarship. Her research explores how teachers in climate-vulnerable regions of Pakistan navigate climate change and use education to build community resilience. Working within UCL's Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education, Tooba bridges research, policy, and real-world impact. She is passionate about ensuring that local voices and lived experiences shape how we teach and respond to our changing planet.

Originally from Pakistan, Tooba brings a deeply personal and global perspective to her work. Having studied at universities in Pakistan before joining UCL, she understands firsthand the contrasts in educational systems and the importance of context-driven approaches to learning. After completing her PhD, she hopes to drive meaningful change through academic research, collaboration with educational institutions, and policy initiatives that put communities at the heart of climate education.

Welcome to this episode of Half Time Scholars. On this episode we feature Louise Chappe. She is a PhD researcher at University College London's Institute of Education, where she studies the relationship between media literacy education in secondary schools and how young people engage with news at home. Her research uses a unique combination of focused ethnography and a Mosaic Approach — including observations, interviews, mind maps and drawings — to capture students' voices in ways that are both ethical and effective.

Louise brings an unusually international perspective to her work. She holds degrees from three countries — a double bachelor's in law and history and a master's in international relations from France, and a master's in journalism and communication from Wuhan University in China — where she also researched how accusations of fake news are used to delegitimise media, and how journalists respond to this.

Her current PhD explores how schools can bridge the gap between classroom media education and students' real-world news habits at home — at a time when social media, algorithms, AI and disinformation are reshaping what it means to be an informed citizen. She argues that news literacy is too often left to the initiative of individual passionate teachers, sitting at the margins of the curriculum, and that this needs to change.

Alongside her research, Louise works as a French teacher and has experience in French print journalism and online media.

Ella Howes is a writer, podcaster, and grief communicator who has recently embarked on a PhD journey. Before her doctoral studies, she worked on translational behavioural science projects at the Human Behaviour-Change Project at University College London, focusing on understanding and sharing insights from complex behaviour change interventions. Her current research examines how complex interventions adapted during COVID-19–affected trials, with a particular focus on how changes in delivery — for example, moving interventions online — influence critical elements such as fidelity, participant engagement, and overall outcomes.

Alongside her academic work, Ella continues to work as a freelance behavioural science consultant, delivering training on the Behaviour Change Wheel to organisations across sectors. In her creative life, she writes and speaks powerfully about grief, often integrating perspectives from behavioural science to explore how people process loss, find meaning, and adapt.

In this conversation, we follow Ella’s journey from applied behavioural science into academia, unpack her evolving research questions, and highlight the challenges and surprises she has encountered. We also explore the intersection of her work on grief and behavioural science, revealing what motivates her to keep pushing at the boundaries of both disciplines.

Welcome to Half Time Scholars, on this episode our guest is Dr. Mariam Parvez Sheikh from the International Education program at the College of Education, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA. Her research employs ethnographic and critical youth research methods to explore how young students in Pakistan’s higher education produce alternative forms of knowledge in social action while articulating struggles related to climate justice, feminism, and anti-capitalism. She also examines the transnational connections between these movements and global youth struggles, highlighting how students challenge gender, ethnic, and class inequities in their pursuit of social justice. Mariam holds a master’s in Education and International Development from University College London (UCL), United Kingdom, and a BSc. Hons. in Economics and Political Science from Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)

Episode Summary:

In this episode of Half Time Scholars, we sit down with Shruti Sheshadri, a doctoral candidate in International and Multicultural Education at the University of San Francisco, to discuss a critical yet often overlooked issue in global education: the persistent mismatch between early-grade language textbooks and the real learning needs of children in the Global South.

Drawing from her research, Dismantling the Hierarchy of Skills: A Comparative Study of the Development of Language Textbooks in the Global South, Shruti explores how standardized textbook design fails to reflect contemporary pedagogy or meet the needs of diverse linguistic communities. Despite billions in investment and intensive planning, textbook development remains rigid, centralized, and out of sync with educational equity goals.

We unpack the findings of her comparative case study across India, Senegal, Kenya, and Jordan, where she conducted interviews, textbook analyses, and document reviews to trace the institutional logics behind textbook development. Shruti reveals how language-in-education policies, community preferences, and institutional hierarchies shape the form and content of textbooks—and how these realities impact learning outcomes.

This episode challenges listeners to think differently about educational materials in the early grades and invites educators, policymakers, and development practitioners to reimagine textbooks not as static tools, but as dynamic platforms capable of supporting inclusive and innovative literacy development.

Key Themes:

• Why early-grade language textbooks are failing learners in the Global South

• The institutional politics of textbook publishing

• The hidden pedagogies embedded in textbook design

• Comparative insights from India, Senegal, Kenya, and Jordan

• The transformative potential of generative AI and digital tools in reimagining textbooks

About the Guest:

Shruti Sheshadri is a researcher, editor, and consultant with deep expertise in global literacy and textbook publishing. She holds a master’s degree in international education development from the University of Pennsylvania and serves as the Assistant Editor of the International Journal of Human Rights Education. She also sits on the Board of Directors of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) as a Student Representative. Since 2018, she has worked on education program design, monitoring, and evaluation and currently consults for the Global Partnership for Education.

On this episode, our guest is Brittany Currenti is a final year PhD student at University of Adelaide focused on the philosophical critique of current understandings of convenience, and the conceptualisation of ‘overconvenience’—when too much convenience leads to negative outcomes for people, profit and planet. She is also one of the creators of Challenges and Changelings, the imaginal serious game for behaviour change, and the Director of Behavioural Research at Australian law firm MinterEllison. Please follow Brittany's work @ https://www.brittanycurrenti.com/

Welcome to Half Time Scholars - On this episode we’re joined by Nicholas Hugman, a PhD researcher at the University of Queensland, whose work explores the nuances of conversational humour—the kind of humour that arises naturally in conversation, distinct from pre-prepared jokes.

While much empirical research has examined conversational humour practices and their functions, there’s been relatively little theoretical work conceptualizing this form of humour.

Nicholas is addressing this gap by theorizing one of humour’s essential features: incongruity. Traditionally studied in linguistic or cognitive terms, incongruity refers to deviations from default expectations.

Nicholas’s innovative approach examines incongruity through an interactional lens, offering fresh insights into how humour operates in everyday conversations. As he approaches the completion of his PhD, with plans to submit in June 2025