Under Review

Andy Tattersall
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Academia has a 'wicked problem' - actually, it has several. Welcome to Under Review, the podcast where I give guests an opportunity to stop tweaking the edges and start reimagining a future where things might work better. What would stay, what would we build from scratch, and what needs throwing into the Under Review rubbish bin? It’s time to put the system ‘under review'. I’m Andy Tattersall and I’m a research communications consultant and in this podcast I will speak to some of the sector’s boldest thinkers to bring us their most radical, left-field and blue sky ideas for change.

  1. Oct 21

    Under Review with Andy Tattersall - Navigating Redundancy, Severance, and Career Transitions in Academia

    In this episode of Under Review I reflect on my departure from the University of Sheffield after 24 years of service following sector-wide financial challenges in 2025. One year after taking voluntary severance from my role as a research communications specialist, I’ve shared an open, personal guide to help academic and professional staff navigate workplace restructures, redundancy decisions, and the emotional toll of career transitions. Key Topics Covered: Separating worth from redundancy: Understanding why restructures are about balance sheets, not personal performance or popularity. Navigating the office environment: How colleagues and management react during periods of organizational change, and handling workplace dynamics when you’re taking leave from your job.  To stay and fight or jump?: Weighing up the toll of trying to retain a role versus making an exit, and making decisions based on personal and family needs. The exit process and legal/financial pitfalls: The long walk to the door, ensuring clarity on settlement terms and consultancy agreements, and addressing the gap in mental health and career support for departing staff. Life after the academy: Dealing with imposter syndrome, age-related job search challenges (over-50s in the job market), starting a consultancy, and rebuilding confidence. Advice for listeners facing restructures and redundancy Document and double-check all terms in your severance agreement. Build a support network outside your immediate department. Don't burn out during your exit period, prioritize your well-being and family. Plan rewards and positive activities to look forward to after your exit. Find out more about me and my services via the following links https://linktr.ee/andy_tattersall  Music courtesy  PineAppleMusic  https://pixabay.com/music/beats-sky-up-hip-hop-166453/

  2. Oct 5

    Under Review with Professor Dawne Irving Bell - Why Open Educational Resources should be the norm

    My guest is Dawne Irving-Bell is a Professor of Learning and Teaching and the Head of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at Arden University. Dawne’s background spans across many teaching levels from secondary, through to further and now in higher education. Dawne has many accolades including being a National Teaching Fellow, Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and proud recipient of a Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence, known as CATE. She is a leading advocate of Open Educational Resources, known as OERs and that’s what we are going to discuss in this episode.https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawne-irving-bell?originalSubdomain=ukhttps://figshare.com/authors/Dawne_Irving-Bell/7900877Academia has a 'wicked problem' - actually, it has several. Welcome to Under Review, the podcast where I give guests an opportunity to stop tweaking the edges and start reimagining a future where things might work better. What would stay, what would we build from scratch, and what needs throwing into the Under Review rubbish bin? It’s time to put the system itself... ‘under review. I’m Andy Tattersall and I’m a research communications consultant with 25 years previously working at a Russell Group university and over the course of this podcast I will speak to some of the sector’s boldest thinkers to bring us their most radical, left-field and blue sky ideas for reform. Find out more about me and my services via the following linkshttps://linktr.ee/andy_tattersall Music courtesy PineAppleMusic https://pixabay.com/music/beats-sky-up-hip-hop-166453/

  3. Sep 7

    Under Review with Caroline Ball - Binning the barriers to open books

    My guest on this episode of Under Review is Caroline Ball, who is the Community Engagement Lead for the Open Book Collective. Caroline joined the Collective in 2025 after working as an academic librarian at the University of Derby. She has a long career in academic librarianship, and is a vocal advocate for libraries and the open access movement.  Caroline is also involved in the Wikimedia UK movement and is currently the Committee Chair for the Community Development Group. In her current role she is the community engagement lead for the Open Book Collective and its open books that we are going to focus on today. Also, like myself, Caroline was named as one of Jisc’s Community Champions in 2025. https://www.linkedin.com/in/librarianonparade/ https://bsky.app/profile/heroicendeavour.eurosky.social https://openbookcollective.org/ About Under Review Academia has a 'wicked problem' - actually, it has several. Welcome to Under Review, the podcast where I give guests an opportunity to stop tweaking the edges and start reimagining a future where things might work better. What would stay, what would we build from scratch, and what needs throwing into the Under Review rubbish bin? It’s time to put the system itself... ‘under review. I’m Andy Tattersall and I’m a research communications consultant with 25 years previously working at a Russell Group university and over the course of this podcast I will speak to some of the sector’s boldest thinkers to bring us their most radical, left-field and blue sky ideas for reform.  Find out more about me and my services via the following links https://linktr.ee/andy_tattersall  Music courtesy  PineAppleMusic  https://pixabay.com/music/beats-sky-up-hip-hop-166453/

  4. Jul 27

    Under Review with Dr Sam Moore - The Cost of Knowledge: Building an Equitable Open Access Model

    In this episode of Under Review we take our first look at the huge topic of open access as part of a deeper dive into open academia. I’m joined by Dr Sam Moore, who is one of the leading voices in the open access movement. Sam is a Scholarly Communication Specialist at Cambridge University Library an Associate Lecturer based at Cambridge Digital Humanities at King’s College.  Sam’s particular research focus is on open access publishing and he is the author of the book Publishing Beyond the Market He is a strong believer in a more fair and ethical publishing model that moves away from the commercialisation of academic literature. Links Sam Moore website https://www.samuelmoore.org/ Sam Moore on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/samuelmoore.org Sam Moore’s Publishing Beyond the Market https://press.umich.edu/Books/P/Publishing-Beyond-the-Market Radical https://radicaloa.org/ Academia has a 'wicked problem' - actually, it has several. Welcome to Under Review, the podcast where I give guests an opportunity to stop tweaking the edges and start reimagining a future where things might work better. What would stay, what would we build from scratch, and what needs throwing into the Under Review rubbish bin? It’s time to put the system itself... ‘under review. I’m Andy Tattersall and I’m a research communications consultant with 25 years previously working at a Russell Group university and over the course of this podcast I will speak to some of the sector’s boldest thinkers to bring us their most radical, left-field and blue sky ideas for reform.  Find out more about me and my services via the following links https://linktr.ee/andy_tattersall  Music courtesy  PineAppleMusic  https://pixabay.com/music/beats-sky-up-hip-hop-166453/

  5. Jun 26

    Under Review with Dr Sarah McLusky and Dr Russell Arnott. Fixing academic conferences.

    Welcome to another episode of Under Review, the podcast where we dare to imagine a better academia for everyone. In each episode, I give my guests the ultimate power to toss the most annoying, outdated, and useless parts of the academic system straight into the Under Review Bin, never to be seen again! In this episode, we are tackling a central piece of the academic ecosystem: conferences. Ideally, conferences are where ground-breaking ideas are shared, vital networks are built, and professionals get to test out new concepts (while occasionally enjoying a nice trip). We have all attended conferences that have inspired us and some that don’t always hit the mark. To help us dissect what works, what fails, and what needs to get binned, I am joined by two fantastic experts who are actively rewriting the event playbook: Sarah McLusky and Russell Arnott. Sarah McLusky is a multi-skilled consultant specialising in helping people and organisations design deeply engaging, successful events. You might also know her as the host of the Research Adjacent podcast, where she champions the many diverse professionals driving higher education forward. Russell Arnott is a passionate marine biologist, science communicator, and a driving force behind Incredible Oceans. This is a platform taking science education far beyond the traditional classroom walls. With lots of public engagement experience across music festivals, TV, and radio, Russell knows exactly what ingredients make a presentation unforgettable. Together, Sarah and Russell have joined forces to launch re-conference, a brand-new service dedicated to radically redesigning conferences so they are genuinely worthwhile, accessible, and enjoyable for everyone. In This Episode, We Discuss:The true value of academic conferences (and where they fall short). What actually makes a presentation engaging versus what kind of talks will make an audience switch off. The philosophy behind re-conference and how we can rebuild academic events from the ground up. What conference tropes are officially getting tossed into the Under Review Bin, never to be seen again! https://sarahmclusky.com/ https://incredibleoceans.org/ https://re-conference.org/

  6. Jun 8

    Under Review with Professor James Wilsdon - The death of the funding bid as we know it

    In this episode of the Under Review podcast I am joined by Professor James Wilsdon for a deep dive into a crisis brewing at the intersection of generative artificial intelligence and academic survival. We  discuss the fine line between AI-driven efficiency and the exponential growth of research funding bids. We discuss whether we need to completely throw out traditional proposals in favour of tracking investigator merit, and look at the radical solutions needed to design a funding agency that can survive the machine age. If AI continues to make inroads into the funding system then we are looking at an impending collapse of the traditional grant-funding system. While for researchers, they were promised that AI would alleviate the exhausting administrative burdens of academia, yet the reality is far more complicated. We are witnessing the rise of agentic AI systems capable of not just assisting, but destabilising the grant-writing process. This has triggered an unprecedented application tsunami, threatening to overwhelm funders and fundamentally alter how scientific excellence is measured and rewarded. James has looked at the endemic problems blighting academia for longer than most. He leads the Research On Research Institute, which is the global engine room for metascience, turning the tools and methods of research back on the system itself to stop the waste of time, talent, and billions in funding.   James is a metascientist at the absolute heart of global research policy. He is a Professor of Research Policy at UCL in the Department of Science, Technology, Engineering & Public Policy. As the Executive Director of the Research on Research Institute, he leads a massive consortium of 55 partners from 23 countries, representing over 33 billion Dollars in annual research funding. From directing science policy at The Royal Society to chairing the landmark Metric Tide review for the UK Government, he has spent decades questioning how we measure excellence and how we use evidence to make big decisions.  He recently hosted Metascience 2025, the largest gathering of its kind in history, proving that the movement to fix science is no longer a fringe interest, it’s a global priority. James is a Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences, a veteran of the Guardian’s Political Science blog. And more recently his work has focused on the impact of generative AI on the research funding system. https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/93009-james-wilsdon https://bsky.app/profile/jameswilsdon.bsky.social https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-wilsdon-0112a7/ https://researchonresearch.org/

  7. May 18

    Under Review with Dr Lizzie Gadd - Metrics, morals, and the next REF

    Welcome to Under Review, the podcast where we stop tweaking the edges and start reimagining a future where things might actually work. I’m Andy Tattersall, and today, we aren't here to talk about incremental policy changes. We’re here to ask: What would we stay, what would we build from scratch, and what needs throwing into the Under Review rubbish bin? Joining me today is one of the sector’s leading thinkers on how we value and measure research and knowledge and the impact it can make on society. Dr Elizabeth Gadd is the Head of Research Innovation Culture and Assessment at Loughborough University. She is a qualified librarian, the Chair of the INORMS Research Evaluation Group, and the past Vice-Chair of CoARA (the Coalition on Advancing Research Assessment). Elizabeth has spent her career navigating the data, the ethics, and how we judge excellence. She has worked on The Metric Tide Revisited, which is a review of the role of metrics in the next UK Research Excellence Framework, AKA the REF.  In this episode we discuss the REF and the challenges of implementing responsible research assessment principles for assessing quality and addressing institutional shortcomings. We discussed University rankings as part of an endemic research culture issue, leading institutions to prioritise citation metrics and publication-focused behaviours. As well as a few things going into the Under Review bin, Lizzie made various recommendations as to how things can be done more efficiently, fairly and with the right answers. Elizabeth Gadd - University of Loughborough Elizabeth Gadd on Bluesky REF 2029 will still move the needle on research culture Can ChatGPT evaluate research environments? Evidence from REF2021

  8. Apr 25

    Under Review with Professor Stephen Curry - The high cost of hiding negative and null results

    Welcome to this episode of Under Review where I am joined by Professor Stephen Curry. Before taking retirement in late 2024, Stephen worked at Imperial for almost 30 years as a Professor of Structural Biology where he retained an Emeritus position. He continues to write about science and describes his area of expertise as figuring out the three-dimensional structures from biological molecules in atomic detail, using X-rays and crystals.  Stephen has long been an active campaigner for the importance of engaging with the public and very much practiced what he preached with multiple outreach videos and articles in the mainstream media. He was also Imperial's first Associate Provost for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. Whilst formally retired from academia, Stephen is still active as a writer and consultant, through his Reciprocal Space Blog and as a Senior Strategic Advisor for the Research on Research Institute. Stephen was chair of the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) for six years from 2017-23, which led to an invitation to speak at the meeting in the U.S. of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, known as NINDS. This in turn led to his recent paper on publishing negative results, which is the topic we are going to explore today.  In this episode we discuss that publication bias is perpetuated by journals prioritizing positive results due to impact factor pressures and how that can be changed among other things. We discussed the importance of rewarding rigor over exciting results, viewing Francis Crick's own failures as valuable lessons. Stephen Curry - Imperial profile Stephen Curry - Research on Research Institute profile Stephen's Reciprocal Space blog Stephen Curry on Bluesky About the show and host Academia has a 'wicked problem' - actually, it has several. Welcome to Under Review, the podcast where I give guests an opportunity to stop tweaking the edges and start reimagining a future where things might work better. What would stay, what would we build from scratch, and what needs throwing into the Under Review rubbish bin? It’s time to put the system itself... ‘under review. I’m Andy Tattersall and I’m a research communications consultant with 25 years previously working at a Russell Group university and over the course of this podcast I will speak to some of the sector’s boldest thinkers to bring us their most radical, left-field and blue sky ideas for reform.  Find out more about me and my services via the following links https://linktr.ee/andy_tattersall  Music courtesy  PineAppleMusic  https://pixabay.com/music/beats-sky-up-hip-hop-166453/

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Academia has a 'wicked problem' - actually, it has several. Welcome to Under Review, the podcast where I give guests an opportunity to stop tweaking the edges and start reimagining a future where things might work better. What would stay, what would we build from scratch, and what needs throwing into the Under Review rubbish bin? It’s time to put the system ‘under review'. I’m Andy Tattersall and I’m a research communications consultant and in this podcast I will speak to some of the sector’s boldest thinkers to bring us their most radical, left-field and blue sky ideas for change.

Information

  • Creator
    Andy Tattersall
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    15
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Andy Tattersall
  • Show Website
    Under Review