Campus Talks by Times Higher Education

Campus by Times Higher Education

Campus Talks is a fortnightly podcast from Times Higher Education. We talk to academics and administrators at universities around the world to share advice, insights and solutions addressing the big questions facing higher education today. Gather academic career advice and tips to improve your teaching, research practices, writing and public engagement work, alongside discussions on the most pressing issues in global HE.

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20 episodes
Updated Wednesday

Episodes20

Newest first

Wednesday · 32 min
Campus Talks: How co-creation and interdisciplinarity enrich university outreach
Outreach is the way in which universities share their research and expertise with groups beyond the institution. Think school visits, science demonstrations, workshops, campus tours, online resources, summer school or festivals. These activities are often aimed at widening participation and inspiring children, teenagers and others – no matter their background – to pursue higher education. And it is works. The Higher Education Access Tracker service found that UK students eligible for free school meals who engaged in intensive outreach were up to 48 per cent more likely to progress to higher education. For this episode, we speak to Lorraine Coghill, who is the deputy director of science engagement at Durham University. With a PhD in biomedical and clinical laboratory sciences, she has over 20 years’ of educational engagement experience, working with schools, universities, science centres, festivals, and educational and community organisations in the UK and Europe. She also contributes to national and international engagement initiatives, including Project Earth, and serves as co-chair of the Space North East England Skills and Outreach Group. Durham’s Stargoal project, which brings together football, physics and gender representation in sport, won the Partnering with Schools category at the 2024 Odgen Trust Outreach Awards. To learn more about the secrets of successful university outreach, head to our latest spotlight guide.
July 15 · 31 min
Campus Talks: The strengths that multilingualism brings to universities
In a globalised world, and the increased internationalisation of higher education, multilingualism can be a key strength for universities. The ability to communicate in more than one language has cognitive and learning benefits, as well as boosting communication skills, employability, cultural awareness and an open mindset. So, how can universities, which often host speakers of scores of languages, capitalise on this skill set? For this episode, we talk to Anwei Feng, a professor in language education whose research and extensive publications focus on bi- and trilingualism with a particular interest in Chinese minority languages. He is chair professor of multilingual education in the School of Education and English in the Institution of Asia and Pacific Studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. Feng, who speaks Mandarin, English and several Chinese dialects, has worked at universities in China, Qatar, Hong Kong, Singapore and the UK, where he did his PhD. He is a key founder and vice-president of the Chinese Society of Multilingualism and Multilingual Education and is co-editor, with Bob Adamson, Zhen Li and Christine Lee, of Nurturing Glocal Talents: The Role of China’s Transnational Higher Education (Routledge), which will be published later this year. For more advice and insight to support student success in the multilingual classroom, head to the latest spotlight guide on Campus.
July 1 · 47 min
Campus Talks: How can universities nudge students and staff towards greener choices
A behaviour change expert explains what is required to shift a whole campus community towards more environmentally sustainable habits. --- To reach net zero, institutions need to shift the behaviour of their whole campus community towards reducing their carbon footprint and making greener daily choices. This means changing long established habits among thousands of diverse students and staff. How can universities do this without becoming too dictatorial? We asked behaviour change expert Esther Papies, a professor at Radboud University in the Netherlands, to explain what drives successful behaviour change and therefore what strategies universities need to employ to reduce their overall emissions and create greener campuses. Esther’s research examines the social and psychological processes in the transition to healthier, more sustainable and more equitable choices, particularly relating to diet. She has published extensively on the motivations and barriers for reducing meat and dairy intake, the motivation for climate action among privileged individuals and emotional experiences relating to climate change. She provides a clear break down of what is needed to support long term behaviour change in favour of more sustainable lifestyles and shares advice on how to overcome inevitable resistance to altering long held behavioural norms such as meat eating and driving cars.
June 25 · 25 min
Campus interview: Alain Pompilus of the University of Florida on how to better understand - and connect with - current and prospective students
How can universities develop sophisticated systems for data sharing and analysis that can guide communications and student services? Alain Pompilus was tasked with putting such a system in place and shares lessons from the experience - - - Universities hold a huge amount of data, with information collected at each stage of a student’s journey. The challenge lies in how to make best use of this data to support insights that can shape university services and communications. Alain Pompilus, associate vice-president for constituent knowledge and insights at the University of Florida, was bought in to address this challenge and create more effective market research efforts in order to better understand and engage key groups such as prospective students and parents, current students and alumni. His work focuses on using research, data, and strategic analysis to deepen the university’s understanding of its target audiences and strengthen how it responds to the needs and expectations of these different communities. Here, he discusses this work, what has been learnt so far and how he has started to build a more joined-up approach to developing and sharing insights across a huge and decentralised organisation like the University of Florida. Thanks to the University of Florida for sponsoring this episode.
June 18 · 44 min
Campus Talks: Why being a queer researcher ‘means speaking truth to power’
The challenges of being an LGBTQ+ researcher in the US have multiplied since Donald Trump returned to the presidency. Funding cuts, closures of LGBTQ+ resource centres on campus, attacks on trans rights and backtracks on Pride Month celebrations have all harmed not only scholars’ crucial work, but also their ability to support the next generation of queer academics. A New York Times data analysis estimated that $800 million (£596 million) worth of research into the health of LGBTQ people had been pulled as a result of the administration’s campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion programmes. One of the LGBTQ+ scientists affected was Lisa Diamond, a renowned researcher of women’s sexuality who lost her own NIH grant in the wake of the sweeping funding cuts. Diamond is distinguished professor in psychology and ethnic, gender and disability studies at the University of Utah. She has a PhD in human development from Cornell and is the author of the groundbreaking, award-winning book Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Love and Desire. In this interview, she talks about the heartbreak, trauma and chaos that the wave of grant terminations brought about. She explains how her experience under the current administration has led her to rethink her role as an LGBTQ+ scientist, how data collection is its own form of resistance, and how she now finds herself giving her students that same kind of cautious career advice she received back in the late 1990s. For her, 2025 was a turning point for LGBTQ+ health research. And in November, she and co-principal investigator Scout, a trans researcher from the LGBTQIA+ Cancer Network, began a survey of the LGBTQ+ community that has grown into an oral history project. For more advice and insight into supporting the LGBTQ+ community in higher education, read our Pride Month spotlight guide on Campus.
June 3 · 42 min
Campus Talks: What does ‘AI across the curriculum’ look like in practice?
We find out how one US institution has led the way in embedding AI across all its majors and what has been learnt in the process --- Many universities are now racing to embed AI literacy across their curricula and equip students with knowledge that may prove critical to future careers. But the University of Florida had embarked on this mission years before large language models exploded into everyone’s consciousness with the arrival of ChatGPT. In this episode of Campus Talks, we speak to Hans van Oostrom, director of the University of Florida’s AI2 Center, which supports the university’s AI initiatives across teaching and research, including the university-wide Undergraduate Certificate in AI Fundamentals and Applications. We discuss what ‘AI across the curriculum’ means in practice, how the University of Florida has built AI expertise across all its academic departments, what drives AI resistance and how to balance AI use against the other foundational skills that students need to develop. For more advice and insight on building AI literacy from higher education experts all over the world, head to our latest spotlight guide: Boosting AI literacy across your institution.
May 20 · 43 min
Campus Talks: How to create university assessments that serve learning
What purpose does, or should, assessment serve? How can educators shift the focus of assessment towards feedback? Who is really driving higher education’s unhelpful obsession with grades? And how does GenAI affect all this? In this episode of Campus Talks, we explore all these questions and more with David Boud, Deakin distinguished professor at Deakin University and a leading scholar on assessment and feedback. David is the foundation director of Deakin’s Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning and an Emeritus Professor at the University of Technology Sydney. He has been a pioneer in learning-centred approaches to assessment and is one of the most highly cited academics in the world on teaching, learning and assessment in higher and professional education with dozens of books bearing his name, including The Impact of Feedback in Higher Education (2019) and Assessment for Inclusion in Higher Education (2022). We discuss what constitutes good feedback, strategies for engaging students in the feedback process, how to design assessments that centre feedback and learning and where universities have been going wrong on assessment and grading.
May 6 · 42 min
Campus Talks: Why it takes more than a PhD to become a good doctoral supervisor
Effective graduate supervision depends on a suite of interpersonal, technical and disciplinary skills, but many scholars enter into this complex, years-long role with only a small toolkit left over from their own journey. When a good supervision experience brings enrichment to supervisor and supervisee, as well as completion cache for both, and poor supervision can be destructive, this is one area of academia that should not be left to chance or assumptions. Especially not when the capabilities required can be learned. Institutions, as well as students and established scholars, have much to gain when universities develop communities and support structures to ensure that skills such as planning, communication, judgement and cultural awareness are embedded across the university. To find out more, we speak to Katerina Standish, an advocate for professional development around graduate supervision and author of The Graduate Supervisors Handbook: Practical Strategies for Graduate Pedagogy and Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026). Katerina is a professor of global and international studies, interim dean of the Faculty of Indigenous Studies, Social Sciences, and Humanities, and vice-provost academic at the University of Northern British Columbia, Canada. Having supervised 26 PhD candidates and many master’s students to completion, her postgraduate teaching and supervision background draws on knowledge of Western and Indigenous research frameworks, and she is a certified conflict coach. This conversation is packed with practical advice about building foundational skills and where established scholars can look to advance their own practice. And for more advice on research supervision that supports and inspires, check out our latest spotlight guide.
April 22 · 45 min
Campus Talks: Why small changes make a big difference to accessibility in higher education
Disabled students make up the biggest minority group in US and UK higher education, accounting for about a fifth of undergraduates in both countries. While efforts to improve access to higher education for disabled students have contributed to increased enrolment, people with disabilities are still less likely than their counterparts to enter college, to feel at home in higher education settings and to secure a degree. And research suggests that many do not to disclose their disabilities once enrolled within an institution, which limits the support available to them. So this week, we speak to a US researcher who has dedicated the last decade to studying the experiences of disabled students in higher education and the barriers to full access and inclusion for all. Katherine Aquino is a social scientist and educational researcher who currently serves as the executive director for research training and development in the School of Graduate Studies at Rutgers University. Her research examines the complexity of disability in the postsecondary setting and her most recent book, The New Accessibility in Higher Education: Disrupting the System for an Inclusive Future, co-authored with Adam Lalor was published by Oxford University Press last year. Katherine explains why existing efforts to improve access and inclusion have so often fallen short of their ambitions, why a shift in mindset is needed for systemic change to take hold and how individuals have the power to drive big change For more advice and insight on improving accessibility for all in university teaching, head to our spotlight guide: Make learning accessible to all in higher education.
April 8 · 39 min
Campus Talks: Where research meets enterprise – lessons from a successful spin-out founder
Learn about the journey from academic researcher to entrepreneur and what it takes to launch a successful spin out company. Academics are specialists in their disciplines and research areas but very few have any expertise in running a business. So, while their discoveries may hold commercial potential, it is rarely a simple or easy process translating this knowledge into a saleable product or service. To demystify the process of research commercialisation, on this episode we hear from a US-based biomedical researcher who has launched and grown five spin-out companies over the last 25 years. Ashutosh Chilkoti is the Alan L. Kaganov Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University and the brains behind companies including PhaseBio Pharmaceuticals, Sentilus and Insolere Bio. He runs the Chilkoti research group and has driven a number of initiatives at Duke designed to support entrepreneurship among students and staff. As well as describing his own varied start-up experiences, he breaks down the process of developing a research finding into a business and offers insight on what investors look for and how institutions can best support their academics efforts in commercialisation. For anyone interested in commercialisation and enterprise, this conversation offers practical takeaways and useful insights to guide your decision-making. And for more advice on this process, check out our latest spotlight: A step-by-step guide to commercialising your research.
March 26 · 34 min
Campus Talks: How to maximise the essential relationships between university academic and professional services staff
The relationship between academic staff and their professional services colleagues is key to delivering on universities’ goals of high-quality student experience and knowledge creation. Today, it’s more strategic alliance than traditional hierarchy, with increasing recognition that skills such as teaching practice are as crucial as subject knowledge, but tensions and challenges remain. This is despite the fact that professional services underpin all university functions, from education practice to careers services, lab management, estates, admissions and student well-being. One issue is that professional services staff don’t always have clear pathways to promotion and progression, which can perpetuate perception of division. So, this Campus Talks episode aims to answer questions such as: how deep is the divide between academic and professional services staff? Does the sector do enough to support career pathways for staff who don’t fit the neat progression of traditional academia? And how can universities do more to ensure that the breadth and depth of professional services expertise are not overlooked? We talk to Eleanor Hodgson, a senior educator developer and director of the ASPIRE Professional Recognition Pathway at the University of Exeter. With a PhD in French, Hodgson has held both academic and professional services roles, at Next Steps South West and Exeter’s Business School, before taking on her current position in 2021. She explains how her team collaborates with academics to enhance teaching and develop expertise such as AI literacy and inclusive pedagogy, and with other professional services teams across the university. She lays out why universities should draw in the depth of expertise across the university at all stages of strategy, policy and programme development. And she offers careers advice for graduates looking for alternatives to the traditional academic pathway. For more insight on related topics, check out the latest Campus spotlight guide on connecting the dots between academic and professional services staff.
March 12 · 40 min
Campus Talks: The career story of Raffaella Ocone, the first female professor of chemical engineering in Scotland
STEM study and research are responsible for much of humanity’s most transformative knowledge and technology. Discoveries and products that emerge from STEM will continue to define how we live now and in the future. So, it should concern everyone that STEM fields are still overwhelmingly male dominated. And it’s not just women who are underrepresented, this also applies to minority ethnic groups. Women make up just 16.9 per cent of the 6.4 million people working in engineering and technology in the UK - compared to 56 per cent in other occupations. While minority ethnic groups make up just 14 per cent of the workforce, according to EngineeringUK’s 2025 workforce report. On this week’s podcast, in homage to International Woman’s Day, we speak to an academic who has built a successful career as a woman in the male dominated field of chemical engineering, to find out how being an outlier shaped her approach to her career and what she thinks needs to change to diversify her discipline. Raffaella Ocone became the first female professor of chemical engineering in Scotland – second in the UK – when she was appointed to the post at Heriot-Watt University in 1999. She is currently serving as president of the Institute of Chemical Engineering, marking the organisation’s first female president and CEO partnership. She is also a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Institution of Chemical Engineers, and the Royal Society of Chemistry. In 2007 she was appointed Cavaliere of the Italian Republic and in 2019 in the Queen’s New Year Honours she was appointed Officer of the British Empire (OBE) for services to engineering. But it all started for Raffaella in a small village, Morcone, in the hills of Campania in Southern Italy where, as she explains, few people backed her chances of becoming a professional engineer. Listen on to hear how she proved them wrong. For more advice and insight on how universities and academics can support efforts to get more women and other underrepresented groups into STEM, check out our spotlight guide: Opening doors to greater diversity in STEM.
March 6 · 32 min
News Talks: Will the next Horizon Europe support 'bigger, better, stronger' global collaboration?
As proposals for the future Horizon Europe are scrutinised by the European Parliament, we discuss likely changes to the seven-year funding programme and whether it can support a coalition of like-minded powers amidst the current geopolitical upheaval. The next version of Horizon Europe, due to launch in 2028, is likely to show much greater alignment with EU economic and defence priorities, backed by the budget almost doubling to €175bn a year. The initial proposal put forward by the European Commission opens Horizon up to dual purpose and defence focused research and places more weight on research designed to drive EU competitiveness in key industries such as green energy and digital technologies. This week Miranda Prynne is joined by THE features editor Paul Jump to discuss how the planned changes could affect European research and the impact on Horizon’s flourishing global network of non-EU members such as the UK, Canada and Japan whose contributions currently make up around a third of Horizon’s total budget. Listen to Paul’s take on whether the new Horizon Europe will provide a platform for a stronger international network of like-minded middle powers, giving them more clout on the world stage, or if a closer focus on Europe’s needs will create tensions with non-EU members.
February 26 · 40 min
Campus Talks: The crucial skill of self-editing for academics
So, you’ve finished writing your book, the ideas are on the page and all that’s left is to send your opus off to the publisher, right? Not so fast. In between draft and submission is the revising stage, one that many scholars gloss over on their way to a polished manuscript. After all, to paraphrase Hemingway, “all writing is rewriting”. Editing is an eminently learnable skill – one that can be broken down into manageable steps. That alone can be enough to ease the fear of looking closely and honestly at how your manuscript is constructed. And a systematic approach can guide writers to fix or improve their work in line with what peer reviewers, scholarly publishers and ultimately the target readership are looking for. For this episode of the podcast, we talk to developmental editor, author and manuscript consultant Laura Portwood-Stacer. Her latest book, Make Your Manuscript Work (Princeton University Press, 2025) decodes the editing process into a set of steps. She explains the key area that anchors a manuscript, how authors can identify the strengths and problems in their work, the skills writers need to edit their own work, and the power of title and chapter headings in reaching as broad a readership as possible. For more advice from experts around the world on how to take your academic writing to the next level, visit the latest Campus spotlight guide.
February 19 · 17 min
News Talks: Is MRes recruitment exploiting UK international student visa rules?
The number of international students enrolled on masters by research (MRes) courses more than doubled in the year after the government introduced a ban on dependent visas for other courses, new figures revealed this week. Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa) data obtained by Times Higher Education show that there were 6,085 non-UK-domiciled students enrolled on MRes courses in the 2024-25 academic year – up from 2,485 in 2023-24. This leaves the institutions behind such rises open to accusations of playing the system and using MRes courses as a way to circumvent the government’s visa rules. On this episode of News Talks, Miranda Prynne speaks to Times Higher Education deputy news editor Helen Packer, who has been covering the story, to find out what lies behind the rising MRes numbers, what the institutions driving the growth have said and the reaction from politicians and other sector leaders.
February 11 · 46 min
Campus Talks: What lies behind the success - or failure - of international branch campuses?
International branch campuses are back in the spotlight with countries including India, Vietnam and Greece opening to foreign institutions for the first time. And with international student flows coming under pressure from government policies, stretched student finances and emerging host countries, transnational education (TNE) and branch campuses offer an effective alternative for reaching overseas students. But while there are many success stories of now well-established branch campuses all over the world, there have also been plenty of failures. There are currently 387 international branch campuses open across 85 countries. A further 73 have opened and then closed, according to research by C-BERT. So, what causes some international branch campuses to flourish while others collapse? To find out, I spoke to Christine Ennew, who served as provost and CEO of the University of Nottingham Malaysia from 2013 to 2016, having been part of the team who travelled to Kuala Lumpur in 2000 to establish this pioneering branch campus. Christine spent five years as pro vice-chancellor at the University of Nottingham and most recently was provost at the University of Warwick until she retired in 2023. We discuss the thinking behind branch campus endeavours, what is needed for sustained success, common criticisms of branch campuses and what impact, if any, the UK government’s new international education strategy may have. For more insight on related topics, check out our spotlight guide on how to deliver value for international students.
February 6 · 23 min
News Talks: University of Sussex v the Office for Students – what could it mean for UK higher education?
We discuss why the University of Sussex has mounted a legal challenge against a £585,000 fine imposed by the Office for Students (OfS) for failing to uphold freedom of speech. The case, being heard in the high court in London this week, brings to the fore questions over academic freedom, institutional autonomy, trans rights and EDI policies and the role of the OfS. On this episode of News talks, Times Higher Education editor Chris Havergal talks to Miranda Prynne about the background to the case, the key points upon which Sussex is disputing the OfS findings and the broader implications for universities and the way they are regulated.
January 29 · 39 min
Campus Talks: ‘Use your brain!’ And other pointers from a seasoned computer scientist on using AI in research
In the last decade, the computational power of AI has grown exponentially – doubling every six months since 2010 for some well-known tools. This, in tandem with more sophisticated machine learning models and increases in available data, has opened up possibilities for research and discovery that would have been unthinkable even a few years ago. But most academics are relatively new to using AI and thus have a long way to go to understand its many potential applications. Something that comes more naturally to some than to others. To find out how researchers can get the most out of AI tools while managing the associated risks, this week, we speak to a leading computer scientist who has been developing AI tools for research for more than 20 years. Karin Verspoor is dean of the School of Computing Technologies at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Her research focuses on the use of AI to support biological discovery and clinical decision making by analysing biomedical text and clinical records. She has held previous posts as director of health technologies and deputy head of the School of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne, as the scientific director of health and life sciences at NICTA Victoria Research Laboratory. Listen to Karin’s take on the good, the bad and the best way forward for AI in academic research. And if you want more practical advice and insight on how to best apply GenAI to augment your own research, check out our latest spotlight guide: GenAI as a research assistant.
January 15 · 35 min
Campus Talks: How to turn vulnerability into a teaching superpower
When students start university or return for a new semester, stressors such as cost of living and worries about academic performance or future job insecurity can exacerbate anxiety or other mental health issues. So, how can educators best support them in the classroom, while also ensuring learning objectives are met and they don’t burn out themselves? This is where skills such as emotional intelligence, observation, active listening and the ability to notice when students are becoming disengaged, falling behind or at risk of dropping out altogether come to the fore. This episode of Campus talks looks at how to foster safe, inclusive learning spaces, how to spot students who are struggling, advice for starting conversations around sensitive topics like mental health, and how educators can be open and authentic while protecting their own boundaries and work-life balance. We talk to Marissa Edwards, who is a senior lecturer and researcher in the University of Queensland Business School. A mental health advocate with a background in psychology and organisational behaviour, she is also the co-editor of the Research Handbook of Academic Mental Health and co-founder and co-curator of Voices of Academia, a blog dedicated to academic mental health and well-being. This interview makes reference to eating disorders, anxiety, depression and trauma. You will find more advice from educators and experts from institutions around the world on supporting students in the university classroom in Campus’ latest spotlight guide.
Dec 30, 2025 · 1 hr 2 min
Campus Talks: The value of arts and humanities
The arts and humanities bring multiple benefits to students, and society as a whole, but are often dismissed as lacking value by policymakers when pitted against STEM subjects. In this episode of Campus talks, a vice-chancellor-come-artist and a classicist explain why the arts and humanities are so vital to a healthy, well-informed society, the specific lessons and skills these subjects engender in those who study them and how university educators can foreground these. You will hear from: Michael Scott is pro vice-chancellor international and a professor of classics and ancient history at the University of Warwick. Michael’s research explores the intersection of ancient history and archaeology within the Mediterranean and beyond. He has published numerous books on the ancient world for the popular market and written and presented TV series on the BBC, ITV, History Channel and National Geographic. Mark Power is vice-chancellor and chief executive of Liverpool John Moores University and a professor of higher education leadership as well as being practising artist. Mark has worked at Liverpool John Moores University for 44 years, having taken up a role as a senior technician in the fine art department at what was then Liverpool Polytechnic in 1981. He has maintained his internationally recognised work as an artist alongside his academic career throughout this time. For more insight and advice on why and how to make the case for the arts and humanities in higher education, take a look at the spotlight guide on Campus.