As an expert in the field, Dr Lisa Sainsbury says that “children’s literature is far more complex than a lot of people give it credit for”. In this week’s podcast, Dr Sainsbury talks about her passion for her subject and her roles in the university – as Research Programme Leader for Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and Associate Professor of English Literature. She offers some advice to post-graduate students on managing their supervisory relationships and talks about Roehampton’s unique approach to children’s literature.  

Links mentioned 

National Year of Reading 

MA in Children’s Literature at Roehampton 

Chapters 

1.00 The job of Research Programme Leader 

2.07 Contacts before arriving at Roehampton 

3.32 The advantage of ‘milestones’ (RDComms) in post-graduate studies 

5.23 How students have changed over the years at Roehampton 

6.58 From Masters to PhD studies 

8.08 Importance of community in academic life 

9.11 Lisa’s PhD in children’s literature 

10.44 History of Roehampton’s approach to children’s literature  

12.04 Children’s literature today 

14.51 Influence of Watership Down 

16.30 What makes a good supervisory relationship? 

19.02 Research students should make use of the wider university network 

The Roey Grad Podcast is a presentation of the University of Roehampton’s Graduate School.  

Our theme music is by DiamondTunes 
 
Our hosts are two PhD students at Roehampton, Charles Miller and Will Berard, who also edits and mixes the podcast. It was produced by Aaliyah Hassan. 

Comments, questions, want to appear on the show? Get in touch at [email protected] 

This week features a longer version of Will’s conversation with Dr Joshua Sadler, who recently defended his Techne-funded thesis, “41 Minutes West: A Passage Towards the ‘Non-Man’, Through Learning Disability, Impossible Epistemes, and Unreal Ontologies”. 

Sitting at the intersection of performance studies, critical disability studies, and epistemology, Josh’s work argue that people with severe learning disabilities are not just the victims of epistemic injustice, but of epistemic exclusion, in that the knowledge they produce cannot be expressed in the dominant epistemology of the academy.  

Josh has done all his studies at Roehampton, he also works as a carer, now at the Grange Centre for people with learning disabilities in Bookham; in addition to this, he his lead facilitator Freewheelers , a youth theatre company of people with disabilities. 

Josh is the Curator of the ‘Us and Them’ project, recreating Victorian photographs of people with disabilities with era-accurate equipment, in partnership with King’s College and On the Record was recently featured on BBC News. 

Chapters 

00:09 Introduction 

01:16 Josh’s thesis 

03:13 Josh’s participants 

08:39 How did the thesis develop? 

10:27 An epistemological challenge to Academia 

16:01 Josh’s positionality 

19:20 Josh’s journey to doctoral research 

22:35 What’s next for Dr Sadler? 

24:59 Finding moments of joy through the journey 

26:58 Wrap-up 

The Roey Grad Podcast is a presentation of the University of Roehampton’s Graduate School.  

Our theme music is by DiamondTunes 
 
Our hosts are two PhD students at Roehampton, Charles Miller and Will Berard, who also edits and mixes the podcast. It was produced by Aaliyah Hassan. 

Comments, questions, want to appear on the show? Get in touch at [email protected] 

Our guest this week make no apology for spending his study hours watching television – often Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives. Ben Keightley’s PhD subject is the representation of women during what’sknown as the second Golden Age of Television. He’s challenging the conventional view of that period, which is often characterised by series featuring male anti-heroes – think Breaking Bad – with evidence that ensemble series featuring women were just as important and innovative.   

Links: 

Joel R. Campbell. Television’s Second Golden Age: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/televisions-second-golden-age-9781666947120/ 

Mick B. Brewer. And Just Like That … misogyny reigns supreme: disciplining womanhood in the critical framings of Sex and the City’s new chapter https://www-tandfonline-com.roe.idm.oclc.org/doi/full/10.1080/15295036.2023.2249541#abstract 

Bill Mesce Jr. Inside the Rise of HBO: A Personal History of the Company That Transformed Televisionhttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Inside-Rise-HBO-Transformed-Television/dp/0786497866 

Chapters 

1.00 Television’s Golden Ages 

2.40 Women in the third Golden Age 

5.40 Advertisers’ influence and subscription models 

9.10 Do you just watch TV all day? 

10.15 Male anti-heroes 

11.30 TV as an academic subject 

12.34 Impact of the streaming services 

14.00 Challenging norms vs simple representation 

The Roey Grad Podcast is a presentation of the University of Roehampton’s Graduate School.  

Our theme music is by DiamondTunes 
 
Our hosts are two PhD students at Roehampton, Charles Miller and Will Berard, who also edits and mixes the podcast. It was produced by Aaliyah Hassan. 

Comments, questions, want to appear on the show? Get in touch at [email protected] 

This week, we revisit, in a longer form, Will’s conversation with Sanjini Kedia, a Dance Therapy student in the School of Arts, who has submitted her thesis, for defence in 2026. Sanjini takes an intersectional feminist lens to the study of transmen’s emotional expression in the context of dance/movement therapy in India. 

• Sanjini’s research profile 

• Sanjini’s latest publication (out since the recording) 

• Zotero, a free, open-source, multi-platform software for bibilography management 

Chapters 

00:09 Introduction 

02:00 Sanjini’s research 

03:30 Sanjini’s journey to her Doctorate 

07:42 Doing research on sensitive topics in different cultural contexts. 

08:45 (post-)qualitative methodology 

11:45 Co-creating an embodied film 

15:32 A complex positionality 

22:24 Epistemological considerations 

25:45 The shift in the politics of gender 

28:35 What’s next for Sanjini and her work 

32:20 Sanjini’s #PhdGlow 

33:00 Managing information in research 

37:11 Wellness tips! 

The Roey Grad Podcast is a presentation of the University of Roehampton’s Graduate School.  

Our theme music is by DiamondTunes 
 
Our hosts are two PhD students at Roehampton, Charles Miller and Will Berard, who also edits and mixes the podcast. It was produced by Aaliyah Hassan. 

Comments, questions, want to appear on the show? Get in touch at [email protected] 

Charles, Aaliyah, and Will talk with Benoît André, PhD student in Roehampton’s School of Arts. Benoît is a composer and sound-designer, researching flooding in Gloucestershire and West London, through the medium of sound. Specifically, electro-acoustic composition - less music than sonic art.  

We discuss this little-known art form, what it brings to an eco-sociological thesis, the impact of flooding on communities (which is not solely negative), and why, in these circumstances, it pays to have your mum own one of the few SUVs in the village.  

Find more of Benoît’s work at  https://www.benoitandre.co.uk/electro-acoustic 

Chapters 

00:09 Introductions 

00:57 Studying flooding through sound? 

02:08 Electroacoustic composition 

04:23 What does a thesis in Electroacoustic music look like? 

07:00 An excerpt from Skein #7 (HEADPHONES RECOMMENDED!) 

09:00 The Electroacoustic ‘scene’ (such as it is) 

13:33 Benoît’s other work, his background 

15:52 What does data collection look like in such a project? 

19:06 Implications for governance 

21:10 Unexpected positives of flooding 

23:58 Flooding and community impact 

28:12 Wrap-up, and Benoît’s Forest Frivolity 

The Roey Grad Podcast is a presentation of the University of Roehampton’s Graduate School.  

Our theme music is by DiamondTunes 
 
Our hosts are two PhD students at Roehampton, Charles Miller and Will Berard, who also edits and mixes the podcast. It was produced by Aaliyah Hassan. 

Comments, questions, want to appear on the show? Get in touch at [email protected] 

This week, we’re revisiting the conversation Aaliyah, Charles and Will had with Kaylianna Christian, a PhD (Prof.) student in the School of Education, which we recorded in July. Apt timing, as this cut features some considerations on Jacob Elordi in Wuthering Heights 😏 

Hailing from Florida, Kaylianna chose Roehampton with great care to study the impact of children’s literature in the moral education of early years learners. Kaylianna is a Christian minister, currently Young Life and Families Pastor at St Peter’s, in Notting Hill, and, whilst her doctoral journey is moved by a profound Faith, her research also includes secular texts, from Peter Rabbit to Frozen. We discuss the challenge of data collection involving young children, her background in Theology and nurseries in the US, the joys and challenges of doctoral study, and why it’s good practice to throw in a fiction book once a month in the middle of all that literature. 

If you are a grad student at Roehampton’s School of Education, Kaylianna is your rep, and if you have ideas, complaints, suggestions, or anything else, do send her an email! 

The Roey Grad Podcast is a presentation of the University of Roehampton’s Graduate School.  

Our theme music is by DiamondTunes 
 
Our hosts are two PhD students at Roehampton, Charles Miller and Will Berard, who also edits and mixes the podcast. It was produced by Aaliyah Hassan. 

Comments, questions, want to appear on the show? Get in touch at [email protected] 

When thinking about a PhD, it’s easy to focus on the D(octorate), but some will truly honour the Ph(ilosophy). In this episode, Will sits down with Dr Joshua Sadler, who recently defended his Techne-funded thesis, “41 Minutes West: A Passage Towards the ‘Non-Man’, Through Learning Disability, Impossible Epistemes, and Unreal Ontologies”. 

Sitting at the intersection of performance studies, critical disability studies, and epistemology, Josh’s work argue that people with severe learning disabilities are not just the victims of epistemic injustice, but of epistemic exclusion, in that the knowledge they produce cannot be expressed in the dominant epistemology of the academy.  

Josh has done all his studies at Roehampton, he also works as a carer, now at the Grange Centre for people with learning disabilities in Bookham; in addition to this, he his lead facilitator Freewheelers , a youth theatre company of people with disabilities. 

Josh is the Curator of the ‘Us and Them’ project, recreating Victorian photographs of people with disabilities with era-accurate equipment, in partnership with King’s College and On the Record was recently featured on BBC News. 

Chapters 

00:09 – Introduction 

01:04 - Josh’s Thesis 

02:55 – Data collection 

04:14 – The participants (Jack and Ray) 

06:40 – Was this  a work of epistemology from the start? 

08:19 – The tension at the core of the work 

09:24 – ‘Man’ / ‘Sub-human’ /’ Non-Man' 

10:35 – Setting up a double-bind 

11:11 -  Lucy (participant) 

12:25 – Josh's positionality 

14:40 – His journey to the PhD 

16:07 – What comes next? 
 

The Roey Grad Podcast is a presentation of the University of Roehampton’s Graduate School.  

Our theme music is by DiamondTunes 
 
Our hosts are two PhD students at Roehampton, Charles Miller and Will Berard, who also edits and mixes the podcast. It was produced by Aaliyah Hassan. 

Comments, questions, want to appear on the show? Get in touch at [email protected] 

This bonus episode features a longer cut of Will's conversation with Sripadma Ganapathi, a third-year Dance PhD student of Roehampton's School of Arts. A dancer, and teacher, of Bharatanatyam, an Indian classical dance form, Sripadma shares details of her  interdisciplinary research, which aims to create a dance-based warm-up routine for Bharatanatyam dancers to help reduce the form's high injury rates. 

Her multidisciplinary mixed-method approach involves ethnographic sourcing movements from an ancient Hindu text, the Nāṭya Shāstra, and validating their effectiveness using motion capture technology, in collaboration with the School of Life Sciences.  

We chat about the personal and academic journey to her doctorates, joys and pains, support and recommendations. 

Mentioned: 

• PhD Help on Instagram 

The Roey Grad Podcast is a presentation of the University of Roehampton’s Graduate School.  

Our theme music is by DiamondTunes 
 
Our hosts are two PhDs of Roehampton, Charles Miller and Will Berard, who also edits and mixes the podcast. It was produced by Aaliyah Hassan. 

Comments, questions, want to appear on the show? Get in touch at [email protected] 

In her PhD in Philosophy, Claire Hamlett explores the idea of animal homes. As a freelance journalist, Claire had been interested to read Wildlife as Property Owners (2020) by Karen Bradshaw, which discussed how animal habitats could be protected in law. Claire decided to take the subject further by embarking on a PhD to see how far those ideas could be extended by thinking of animals as living not simply on territories or building shelters but creating homes. Animals don’t need to be able to explain their reasons for what they are doing, Claire says, but they clearly have agency. In this show, Charles enjoys a wide-ranging discussion with Claire about animal rights, human responsibilities and the pair of jackdaws in her neighbour’s chimney.    

Chapters 

00.50 Claire’s work in journalism 

03.10 The difference between ‘where animals live’ and ‘animal homes’ 

05.43 What would be the effect of thinking of ‘homes’ for animals? 

07.56 Animal agency 

10.58 How to avoid anthropomorphising animals 

13.09 Should all animals be treated with equal respect?  

15.58 Implications for zoos 

18.02 Claire’s practical investigations of animal homes 

19.20 The jackdaws next door 

The Roey Grad Podcast is a presentation of the University of Roehampton’s Graduate School.  

Our theme music is by DiamondTunes 
 
Our hosts are two PhD students at Roehampton, Charles Miller and Will Berard, who also edits and mixes the podcast. It was produced by Aaliyah Hassan. 

Comments, questions, want to appear on the show? Get in touch at [email protected] 

A longer cut of Will’s interview with Jian Bakir, a third year Education PhD student. Jian’s thesis explores the experience of primary school teachers in active war zones – in this instance Aleppo, Syria. They discuss the very personal path to Jian’s research, the difficulties of collecting data from a war zone, her likes, dislikes and recommendations when it comes to doctoral life.  

Recommendations: 

AI for literature: 

- https://elicit.com 

- https://scite.ai 

The PhD Life Raft podcast 

The Grad Coach YouTube channel 

Chapters 

The Roey Grad Podcast is a presentation of the University of Roehampton’s Graduate School.  

Our theme music is by DiamondTunes 
 
Our hosts are two PhD students at Roehampton, Charles Miller and Will Berard, who also edits and mixes the podcast. It was produced by Aaliyah Hassan. 

Comments, questions, want to appear on the show? Get in touch at [email protected]