We explore retirement readiness, gender gaps in pension wealth, and the real-life consequences of inequality across the life course.

Dr Amy Harrison speaks with Dr Sam Parsons about what long-running birth cohort studies can reveal about people’s lives as they approach retirement.

Full show notes and links to research: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news/2026/mar/worked-more-still-got-less-research-real-world

More IOE Insights podcasts: https://uclioe.info/podcast
UCL Institute of Education: https://ucl.ac.uk/ioe

What does a PhD journey look like when you paint it rather than write it?

Louise and Tooba are two international doctoral students at the UCL Institute of Education, and in 2026 they are navigating the third year of their PhD programmes. Each month they will meet to sit down, talk, and paint. These sessions turn reflective conversations into visual stories, using art to bring their PhD experience to life on the page - their 'PhD Sketchbook'.

In this episode they explore the beginnings of their journeys: the “seeds” that motivated them to start a PhD, their paths to London, and the small moments that help an unfamiliar city slowly feel like home, all shared over canvas and colour.

You can see the artworks they created during this episode on the UCL IOE student blog, and on the IOE Instagram account.
Full show notes and links: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news/2026/mar/painting-our-way-through-research-belonging-and-london-phd-sketchbook 

10-year-old Sofia hosts a friendly conversation with her guest Shania, a 9-year-old from Mumbai, about what sleep looks like in their day-to-day lives and compare bedtime routines.

Full show notes and links: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news/2026/mar/childrens-sleep-routines-bedtimes-dreams-and-how-sleep-affects-mood-and-school

Podcast produced by UCL Sleep Education Research Lab.

High school teacher Mustafa Sakarwala speaks with Nandini Adusumilli (PhD student at Sleep and Education Research Lab at UCL) about why sleep is a core foundation for children’s and teenagers’ attention, learning, and exam recall.

Full show notes and links: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news/2026/mar/sleep-memory-and-academic-performance

Chloe Morgan and David O'Connell share their journeys to becoming UCL advanced facilitators. They join this episode’s hosts, Mark Quinn and Nancy Karmali Belmonte, for a discussion on the power of facilitators in supporting other teachers to learn.

Early career teachers all have busy school days; Chloe and David reflect on how facilitators can create safe spaces for ECTs to reflect on their practice.

It’s about designing sessions for thinking, they say, and creating spaces for growth.

Full show notes: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news/2026/mar/being-and-staying-curious-staffroom-s06e05

Peter tells the story of how he was diagnosed with dyscalculia at 10 years old.

Liz and Helen chat with Peter about his dyscalculia diagnosis. They explore the barriers people face as children and adults to identifying this under-researched and misunderstood specific learning difficulty.

Peter shares the impact the diagnosis had on his experiences at school, expressing feelings of shame, and his journey to come to terms with the diagnosis as an adult.

Full show notes: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news/2026/mar/i-saw-it-thing-be-ashamed-lived-experience-dyscalculia

Image: Emily Gee and Mia Borthwick meeting at the adults with dyscalculia lived experience event at UCL IOE. Photo courtesy of Elisabeth Herbert.

Mark Quinn speaks with Dr Gergo Baranyi about researching environment and health with a lifecourse approach, using data that follows people over time.

Dr Baranyi describes how linking cohort data to administrative and geospatial sources can paint a richer picture of exposure than using a single home address alone.

They discuss how these methods can connect housing and neighbourhood conditions to outcomes that matter, including schooling.

Full show notes and links: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news/2026/mar/how-poor-housing-shapes-school-outcomes-and-why-place-matters-research-real-world

Scott and Mia discuss the negative impact dyscalculia has had on their wellbeing.

Scott and Mia talk to Liz and Helen about the negative emotions they associate with mathematics in and outside of the classroom. They explore how this differs from the way adults without dyscalculia might feel.

They mention anxiety, panic, shame, anger, and frustration, as well as low self-esteem that follows them long after they have left school. They share how their dyscalculia not only affected their learning at school, but also their experiences in workplaces.

Finally, Scott and Mia describe how they put in the work to rebuild their confidence in adulthood.

Full show notes: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news/2026/mar/which-green-day-song-helps-you-get-train-station-time-lived-experience-dyscalculia

Image: Emily Gee and Mia Borthwick meeting at the adults with dyscalculia lived experience event at UCL IOE. Photo courtesy of Elisabeth Herbert.

Rose shares the daily challenges she faces as an adult living with dyscalculia.

Liz Herbert and Helen Williams speak with Rose about how dyscalculia affects her day-to-day life.

Touching on school, employment, friendship, shopping, and even splitting the bill, they explore the barriers and difficulties one can face when living with this specific learning difficulty.

Full show notes: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news/2026/mar/living-dyscalculia-lived-experience-dyscalculia

Image: Emily Gee and Mia Borthwick meeting at the adults with dyscalculia lived experience event at UCL IOE. Photo courtesy of Elisabeth Herbert.

What if we could trace the arc of a generation from the very beginning to understand how our earliest environments shape our adult lives? Coming up on Research for the Real World, we explore the work of the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies by following cohorts born in the 1950s all the way to a new generation arriving in 2026. Join our IOE researchers as they unpack decades of unique data to reveal how housing, basic skills, and geography influence lifelong outcomes, and discover how these insights are driving real-world interventions to tackle deep-rooted inequalities.

Catch up on previous episodes: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/about-ioe/ioe-life/podcasts/research-real-world
More IOE Insights: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/podcast