Getting in early, picking on things, trying to play with it, find

out if it works, you know, particularly at the moment with AI and then passing on

that knowledge, I think is really useful.

And it just takes one person to use it in a really fantastic

way, and everyone goes, wow.

Yeah.

And that's always been the case with technology, isn't it?

I think the really valuable professional services people are the ones who try and

change their environment for the better.

Hello there.

I'm Sarah McLusky and this is Research Adjacent.

Each episode I talk to amazing research adjacent professionals about what

they do and why it makes a difference.

Keep listening to find out why we think the research adjacent space

is where the real magic happens.

Hello, I'm your host, Sarah McLusky, and you are listening

to the Research Adjacent podcast.

In a minute, you'll be hearing from today's guest, Andy Tattersall.

Now, depending on when you're listening to this podcast, Andy is

either based at the University of Sheffield, or if it's after summer 2025.

He's now freelance.

Andy doesn't fit neatly into typical job categories.

I first met him through podcasting, but I had also seen him writing

a lot about the social media use and tentative rise of blue sky.

Well, it turns out what he really specializes in is using technology

to solve communication problems and suddenly it all makes sense.

A late comer to education, he has evolved from a pirate radio DJ into

a research communications specialist.

We talk about his constant drive to make things better.

While universities can be slow to adopt new technologies, his love of good

conversation and why he would uses magic wand to improve CPD for everybody.

Listen on to hear Andy's story.

Welcome along to the podcast, Andy, it is fantastic to have you here as

a guest and kind of on the other side of the microphone for you, although

I'm sure we will get to that shortly.

Could you tell us a bit about what it is that you do?

Okay.

So yeah, thanks for having me, Sarah.

And, uh, what do I do?

This is a tricky thing.

Even some of my colleagues will ask me this, what exactly I do,

and some, some have claimed in the past, all I do is mess about on the

internet, but, what I do, I think in essence what I'm, is a troubleshooter

and a creative ideas person.

And my job title, which is what I came up with and finally

managed to squeeze through at the University of Sheffield, was Open

Research Communication Specialist, 'cause I think that's what I do.

And before that I was an information specialist.

So my work I think is between the sort of the intersection, of communications,

'cause my first degree is journalism and information science, 'cause that's

my master's degree, underpinned by a practical set of skills that allow me

to make stuff, to solve problems and to help people primarily communicate

their research, 'cause I work in health research at the moment.

But as you'll know at the point of recording this, I will be

leaving University of Sheffield in a few months time to go do

this on my own for other people.

So I think really that is it.

And the way that people may understand it is that I see myself a bit of a research

equivalent of a learning technologist.

And I don't think I necessarily exist because people are either

a marketing person or they're a learning technologist or they're an

a, a scholarly communications person and I think I do bits of everything.

I'm a jack of all trades and maybe a master of some.

That's what I am.

Yeah.

So when you say you do lots of different bits, tell us a bit

about some of those different kind of projects and things that you are

working on or technologies that you use.

Um, examples might be, so I was part funded by the NIHR

in terms of knowledge mobilizing NIHR research into local government.

Sort of like make some kind of an impact.

So the kind of things that I've done there as part of that work is, is making

infographic, it might be making animation that explains what we're doing, but also,

uh, only this week I put together a public engagement event as part of a festival

that runs over a month in Sheffield called Festival of Debate, where I had colleagues

who I worked with on this project along with the Sheffield's Director of Public

Health, Greg Fell, and I, I had those turn up and have a panel discussion about

this topic in front of a live audience.

And that event was totally put together by me.

Now putting events together isn't something that I necessarily do.

What I, I certainly do is I, I look at an area where I think people

need to know about something.

And I'll recruit speakers together.

And I've done that for people like UKSG.

So I'm not an event organizer 'cause I know that's your area.

But I'm more like a I think of myself as a fantasy football kind

of person that I think that'd be a great speaker and that'd be a great

speaker and let's get them together.

And I've come up with an idea of a way we can badge it.

Uh, and such like.

Other things that I've done, which are not necessarily technology enabled.

10 years ago I started writing retreats.

That was because I had to finish a book on altmetrics that I'd been commissioned

to do, and I was struggling to do it.

And the writing retreats called Write Club have run for the last 10 years.

And I, I did a quick, um, check on on the data since lockdown,

see how many people had attended from the University of Sheffield.

And it was just shy of 600 people who had been to these sessions.

And this is where people get together and write, and it's based on a Pomodoro

technique where you take five minute breaks, you write for 25 minutes.

We have yoga videos, we have meditation star and things like that.

And some of 'em, I just play music throughout the day and people

listen to music in the background.

And it's a real good way to bring people across the campus together.

That is a sort of what I would say is the kind of the antithesis of what I do,

which is to kind of push out technology.

Yeah.

And to, to promote things.

Whether that's altmetrics, whether that's the use of podcasting, whether that's

the use of making videos, whether that's writing blogs, social media and such.

Like, so I'm an advocate for all of those things, and I think that's

what I'm kind of largely known for.

But the kind of the Write Club was a byproduct.

Some of the other things I've done is I started a series about 15 years ago

called Bite-Size that still runs at Sheffield, which are 20 minute talks on

Technologies to or ideas to help people work better.

I was the first person at Sheffield to kinda spot massive online open

courses, and we ran the first three of those I think in 2012, 2013.

And we had 8,000 students sign up for them.

Uh, and again, that was me spotting something.

So, and getting, getting buy-in.

It does sound very much, I think you said at the very beginning

you're a bit of a problem solver.

I think it also sounds like you're a bit of a magpie.

You're just like,

Absolutely.

There's a thing over here and there's a thing over

here and let's put them together and see what we can come up with.

Absolutely.

I've been definitely a magpie for about 15 years, and I, I'm a shambrarian

as I've been told many times, so I'm someone who affiliates very strongly

with the academic library community.

I know loads of them.

I've spoke at dozens of library conferences.

I've given invited talks at, you know, CILIP and international Business

Librarians Conference at International Clinical Librarians Conference.

I'm not a librarian.

I have probably a librarian's brain that I like to curate things.

Put things in order and like to naturally share.

And help people and solve problems, which I think is a

lot of work that librarians do.

But the other flip side is one previous manager said to me many years ago,

I'm also a bit like a bull at a gate.

And I've changed that because

But the problem with the bull at the gate sometimes is that you rush in

and you, you do get things wrong.

And so I've sort of become a little more pragmatic.

And maybe that's the thing with age, as you get older, you become a

bit more, I won't say conservative.

A little more

cautious.

Cautious, yeah.

And I'll still take risks and I'll still push things out and I'm still prepared

to annoy people because I think I might be right about something and I want them

to come around to that way of thinking 'cause I think the evidence is there and.

I'm a practitioner first and foremost, but I am strongly underpinned by evidence.

So when I'm telling you to do something, then there is an evidence

base hopefully behind a lot of it.

Um, even though the evidence might be weak or not, not substantiated

at the time 'cause it's early days I'm certainly not a futurologist.

No.

But I've always tried to lead from the front and I've always

tried to bring people along with me and certainly work with the idea of bringing

people along with me who want to come.

Yeah.

I. Many years ago that you can really try and, you know, you can take a horse

to water but you can't get it to drink.

And there are people in the academic world who unfortunately will never, ever change

and they're not worth the investment of your limited time and energy.

But there is this huge swathe in the middle, you know, the kind of

on and that kind of, diffusion of innovation curve, there's that huge

group of people who are interested.

And I've been tried, I've tried to be attuned to the issues that impact

them, the inequalities that impact them, the time issues, particularly

if you're part-time, if you are, if you are female, you know, you

take the caring responsibilities invariably and all those problems.

So Write club is a good example of that because since I've run it.

Um, and you know, I've had nearly 600 people attend since 2020.

On top of all those who attended the five, six years before that,

it is roughly 95% female attended.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're the people who most need that space, perhaps

that, that's somewhere to gather?

I think so.

I think that they're more likely to be they're more likely to struggle

time-wise because of other demands.

Also, I think are possibly more open to working that way as well.

I think that might be a reason as to it that they actually think, there's

nothing wrong about going into a room with a bunch of people to write together.

I think there's a lot of blokes you might go, oh, you don't need to do that.

Yeah.

You know, a bit of, I think there's a little bit of that.

But I think largely it is down to equity.

And kind of cultural sort of reasons why.

Women to attend those sessions.

Yeah, so I, I, I'm, I'm pleased with that because I do want to bring

equity to research communications because it's not just those who

are resource poor, time poor.

I think it's also that I. Research, particularly in institutions

has a habit of very much going with the easy, big wins.

And they might be that's won 10 million pounds, that

project's won 10 million pounds.

That project is going to solve this particular cancer, et cetera.

And a lot of the very, very small projects that make some really, really

decent societal impact and some change get overlooked because it's one person

in a department doing one thing that just it's not seen hot or sexy enough.

Yeah.

Or attention grabbing.

And I think that there's more to be done to give these people a leg up because

these little seed investments of, of research and time and these little

pots of money can lead to big things that lead to a wider societal impact.

Yeah, definitely.

And I think.

Not only in terms of helping the research get, but like you say, the

help that you can do to get that research out into the world and

the difference that that can make.

Because often the big projects will have a budget for things.

They might even have a member of staff on the team who can

do all their communications and get everything out there.

But like you say, those little projects, if there's somebody who's working across

the organisations, can give them a little bit of time, a little bit of help can

make a big difference to them, can't it?

A absolutely.

You know, a little bit of money can go the right way if it's used right.

And the problem with lot of big projects is when they put in bids, you know,

historically anyway, and I think things are changing for the better slowly, but

historically it was very much a tick box.

We'll have a website, we'll use Twitter, we'll do this, and there wasn't really

much thought for it or the alternative was, uh, we don't do anything.

We get to the end and oh my goodness, we now need to start

thinking about telling people.

And the pot of money has been taken away from us now 'cause

it's at the end of the project.

Yeah.

And we can't do anything.

Uh, so it's a bit slap dash at times.

It's Ill thought, I like the idea of, thinking about things in the

longer term as a campaign possibly.

And that's very hard to achieve.

And I think that does take resource, but I think if people can think about

that, and I think this is particularly important when you are working

directly with the public, because one of the problems with research is it

parachutes into a cohort in society.

It does some work and it pulls out.

And I think that these problems are often endemic.

I, you know, working in health research, we, we are looking at

often endemic problems that are very wicked, that can't be solved by one

necessarily solution or, or person.

And that thinking about campaigns extends that, and it also kind of,

I think, helps with the civic duty

Of what research should do.

And one of the problems that we get is that stories are often told of

in the frame of 5 million pounds won by the University of whatever.

Yeah.

And I think the, yeah, the money is so important.

Obviously it allows you to do those things, but really the story is what's

the impact and who's the lives and what's the breakthrough gonna be?

Because I think that's what the public care about.

They don't know if 5 million pounds is a lot of money it in, in a

lot of cases obviously it isn't.

Yeah.

But what they want to know is, will my mom.

Beat this illness.

Yeah.

Will my dad get well?

Yeah.

Will I, you know, and I think that's quite, that's the, quite

the important thing, the money.

I don't think newspapers are interested in the money usually.

Yeah.

They're interested in the, the actual impact.

So, but I also think that for a large extent, and this is.

This is across the board.

Whether you're working as an individual trying to do things or working as a

group who may have an administrator.

I think it's all about little 1% increments, trying to make

everything a little bit better.

How can we make our comms a bit more visible?

How can we make this bit of work a bit more impactful, how can we actually

manage to reach this cohort of society?

How can we manage to reach this policy maker?

And they're all little 1% that you, you have to think about all the time because

you know, you think about and um go into something in, in, in Sheffield I forgot

the gentleman's name now, but he, he's a kind of a sports psych psychologist

who worked with I don't wanna say his name 'cause I'll get it wrong, but,

uh, um, he worked with British cycling.

And the reason British cycling was such a huge success throughout the noughties

was that he took this this idea.

His, his business is called Chimp Management.

Uh, I wanna say Steven Peters, I could be wrong, Steve Peters, but he went

and they looked at 1% increments.

And those increments could be washing your hands after you've been to the loo

to reduce infection, because if cyclists catch a cold, they can't practice.

Yeah.

These little things like that.

Yeah.

Doing something to this piece of the technology to improve it.

Yeah.

Um, habits, habit forming.

So I think that that's quite important.

Yeah.

And it all adds up over time, doesn't it?

Absolutely.

These, absolutely these little improvements here and there, you know, it

doesn't always need to be about the big splash, about the big development, like

you say, the things that get reported these big grant wins and things like that.

And actually at the end of the day, it doesn't always make much difference.

So one thing I think people will be really curious to know is how

you got into doing this work.

You mentioned.

Having been, you know, doing learning technology and things like that.

But yeah, tell us about your journey.

So, well, first of all, I wanna clarify, it was Steve

Peters, so I just wanna make sure.

Excellent.

I just did a quick Google search.

Professor Steve Peters.

He's the gentleman.

How did I get into it?

I. Was late.

I, I completely flunked at school.

I didn't have a great start to life.

I was taken from my parents as a baby, so life didn't start

great and I flunked to school.

Had a good time throughout my teens and my twenties, and then decided needed to get

an education and I went off to college.

Cut.

Long story short, went and did some A levels age 26.

Felt massively outta my depth.

Then managed to get a place at Sheffield on their journalism degree, which

was at the time I think they had 1400 applicants, and I was very lucky to get

on as a mature student and felt outta my depth, but it was an amazing experience.

And then went off to be a journalist for a short while, sports journalist

for the Press Association.

And did journalism as well, doing journalism in the background.

And I've continued to do that in capacity doing music and culture.

But I, saw a job at the University of Sheffield.

I went there doing their inter library loans.

Okay.

And it was a very overwhelming job.

It was a, it was a paper-based job and after about a year I went off to

a, an event and came back and said, I think we need to digitize the system.

This was in my academic department and we were doing around 600 inter library

loans, um, a month, which was quite a lot.

And I digitized it.

And we had a system for doing this.

And I did that for a few years and started doing other things

that were not part of my job.

So I redesigned the library in Google SketchUp.

In 3D and I started, um, doing just various stuff that

were not part of my job and.

The, this particular guy very esteemed academic in the evidence-based

synthesis world and evidence-based librarianship he's led in that

and innovated from the start.

He's, he is, he is the kind of the godfather of, of, of a lot of stuff.

Uh, Andrew Booth decided there was a job for me and he managed

to get funding with another professor and Professor Wendy Baird.

And in 2007, they created a job for me, which was basically looking at stuff like

innovating the library and doing things around, you know, I started doing blogs.

Started YouTube channel around 2008, 2009, and just was left to my own

devices and have been for 18 years, very much under multiple managers.

So I took the job exactly where I wanted.

Yeah.

Um, which has been a huge.

I'm huge privilege.

Yeah.

And I've been trusted.

It comes with an awful lot of downfalls and responsibilities and, and concerns.

It's not, it's not all, uh, it's not all wonderful, but it's it has been, I've

been blessed that I've been supported in that area to go off and do that.

So what I would've said is, is that probably around 2007, 2008, I probably

was a proto learning technologist.

I was very interested in the learning side of things, so I was involved in the

teaching and I was doing teaching myself.

And it was around, I think around 2010, 2011, I remember sitting down with

the guy who was the head of our, our sort of section at the time, professor

Simon Dixon, who recently retired.

He's a health economist and he said, you need to figure out what you want to do.

Do you wanna go and do research or do you want to go and do teaching?

'cause I was sort of straddling both to some extent.

And I went away and thought.

The learning technologists are starting to really take off in the institution.

There were people there who'd been doing that for years before me uh, who'd

been doing that in various capacities.

And the whole movement was certainly really, really

getting going on institutions.

And I thought, actually there's nothing happening in terms of research.

And I'm, and I'm talking about being a, a research technician.

I'm not talking, I'm not talking about research communications.

It was purely about the digital side of things.

The digital literacy, that's everything from, Google apps and

I was, I was very much the kind of the lead for Google at Sheffield.

It, it implement, not implementing it, but certainly.

Being the person for it to go out and speak to departments and show them.

Because prior to us getting Google in around 2010, I was already

using Google in the institution.

And again, this is before we're thinking about information governance.

You know, I was using the Google email to get set up accounts.

Yeah, I'd got Blogger running, I'd got YouTube running, uh, I was

using SketchUp and stuff like that.

So I decided that I'd go down the research route, and that was

where it, it was for me and that's really where I've been ever since.

Underpinned by information and technology literacy.

So, uh, people do invite me to give talks about technology and adoption and that's

something I've learned a lot about.

How do you get people to buy in stuff and what are the issues about that?

Yeah, that's making me think of the work you've done recently

about the move of organisations away from Twitter and towards other platforms

and like you say, it's that period of adoption and what makes people move and

when do they move and that sort of thing.

Yeah, really interesting.

Yeah, and what I've sort of learned is that universities are herds.

They kind of follow each other eventually.

And they sit and watch what others are doing.

And there's not really truly that many that are truly freethinking or radical.

You know, you'll get a university that'll go, we're gonna step

away from these rankings.

We're not gonna play part of that anymore.

That's a very brave decision to do, and we're gonna, we're gonna do that.

But I think they do follow, quite often in herds.

I think they're very slow to move as a whole.

I predicted that with Twitter when Elon Musk took over, I said, well,

people are gonna jump 'cause you can make a decision as an individual.

You can make it on an ethical choice.

You can make it on a political choice.

You can make it on a mental health decision or personal decision.

But as an organisations, it's really tricky.

And I, and I, and it's proven to be so with Twitter that they're they may be

investing elsewhere, but the majority are still not jumping off that one yet.

. Um, and, uh, I don't think things will change on Twitter, so it will be

interesting to see how that one plays out.

And then, and then you mentioned also looking at how things

like AI might be starting to come in to organisations, what difference that

makes in places like universities.

What have you found there?

Well, I'm really looking at it from the

perspective of dissemination.

'cause that's what I'm interested in.

And what I found largely is, is if I was to sum it up, it would be

let's not get carried away just yet,

or not get ahead of ourselves.

I think, uh, there are probably an awful lot of researchers out there

who are leveraging it really well now.

I think they're probably got some really good workflows

and they're being very savvy.

Whether they're telling other people about it will vary from person to person.

Uh, but I think we're probably seeing for all of those, we're seeing

a, a probably two or three more that are doing it very badly and

potentially also in a corrupt way.

So I, the issue I've got with AI is, uh, certainly from the platforms

I've looked at, is it's being shoehorned into a lot of stuff.

And I think it's detracting away from the quality of the said platform.

And I think that people not necessarily are in a position to make a good value

judgment as to whether that works well.

Uh, so what would be good would be more conversations.

It's something I wanna think more about, maybe even develop a course

on, in terms of dissemination.

Uh, I, I know initial, conversations and I get this, you know, you,

you speak to perhaps people, media people, people who might work in press

very cautious and nervous about it.

Because they're worried about it, undermining their roles.

And I, I get that.

I get that why people in the arts and humanities are particularly wary of AI.

But I do think that it is an opportunity in this area.

I think it's an opportunity for accessibility.

I think it's an opportunity to develop some very inventive

and creative ways of working.

You know, a good example would be you look at image creation just a year ago

with something like Midjourney or ChatGTP, the quality of images were pretty crap.

Even if you had a, a good prompt, if you wrote something quite

decent, it still came out with wonky hands and skewed faces.

Whereas now if you do something, you can get something that's quite.

Decent with a relatively straightforward prompt.

That's my experience of late.

That's good.

But again, I think it goes back to the issue of inequalities because with all

of these AI tools, they've got to make money and, uh, to get the real good

stuff you're gonna have to pay for it.

It's the, it's the old web 2.0 world.

That we had, you know, if you remember 2004 to around 2007 was a huge expansion

of web tools that came out that just did everything and it was amazing.

And then you realize actually a lot of them aren't that good.

They don't improve your life and a lot of 'em don't work well.

And then some of the ones that did work well are, have been created by a PhD

student who realizes that he or she needs to get a an income and that's

not paying them and it disappears.

And I think we'll see this with AI.

I think we'll see platforms rise fall, we'll see people who can't leverage

it, make money and we'll also see an awful lot of gumpf out there.

Yeah.

As a result.

So I think it's interesting times and it, I what the situation is for universities,

but I. I would guess that many are taking very different approaches and some are

trying to lock down as much as they can.

They see it as an information governance issue.

They see it as a literacy issue.

And perhaps some of the students might even be better equipped than

some of the staff in using these tools and finding ways to do that.

And some of 'em might be running with it.

And doing some really interesting stuff and some having some

really interesting conversations.

I know at Sheffield there's some really good people that are behind this, that

are doing, doing some very interesting things, sharing things that I don't

understand, you know, around data and code and how to carry out research.

And they're doing, they're doing some really, really good stuff.

But for the majority of academics, they probably are a little bit bewildered right

now as to not just how do they use it, but what can they use it for, and I think

I would say that's exactly

how I feel so,

And it just takes one person to use it in a really fantastic

way, and everyone goes, wow.

Yeah.

And that's always been the case with technology, isn't it?

You know?

Yeah.

Someone goes off,

You don't know you need it, so then you don't

see how it fits into your life.

And it takes a while to, yeah, to actually figure out.

It's like, it's like when they invented text messaging and they

didn't think anybody would want it.

Yeah.

And then they, and then it just, and everybody went, oh,

actually this is really good.

Yeah.

So,

yeah.

We shall see.

We shall see.

Yeah.

Um, but one technology that you have really embraced is podcasting, isn't it?

That's, and that's how our paths crossed, um Yes.

In the first place.

What is it that you find so interesting or enjoyable about podcasting?

So again, going back many years, the journey starts when

I was probably about 12, 11 listening to Radio Luxembourg under the covers

as a little boy and fascinated by radio, and then becoming an avid

record collector at the age of 11.

Making my own radio shows called Tatt on Two.

Excellent.

Are there recordings of this anywhere?

There isn't.

They were on cassettes and they were given to friends along with Tatt on Two pens.

Which were pens with the word Tatt on Two liquid papered onto them, and so I

would've been about 13, 14 at the time.

I'd record a record and then record a microphone and me

talking in between and, yeah.

Pause tape, do the do stuff.

And then I got into DJing in the sort of mid eighties.

I be, I became a hip hop dj and so I can scratch and do all that sort of stuff.

Not as good as I used to.

But, but I did all that.

And um, and then in 1991, became a pirate radio DJ for six years.

And, and was on a few stations, a couple of very infamous ones in, in Sheffield,

very well known Fantasy FM and SCR, which when I've been featured in interviews, you

get colleagues in meetings and they'll say were you the same person that was featured

in this article that was in this magazine?

Which is happened?

It's like, yeah.

So I did that and then I went to do journalism, which

included broadcast journalism.

And I then went sort of, uh, probably, the mid two thousands, I

was approached by a radio station online, a hip hop radio station

who was an international one known.

And I was persuaded to kind of start doing a show, which I did for a few years.

And then I moved on to another station and I did that.

And the weird thing is I took quite a while to bring it into a professional

setting . So I didn't do my first podcast until, I think my first ones around 2018,

2019, and they're one person podcast.

It's me talking about a thing scripted, right?

Yeah.

So it's talking about, so I did those and I, I didn't, I didn't, we didn't have the

facilities, I don't think, at Sheffield at the time to really do anything properly.

So I did that, but I found a report I wrote in around 2007 around

customer relationship management and how we approached students and

what other universities were doing.

And I was asked to dig the report out a few years ago,

about four or five years ago.

And I looked through the conclusions and one of the key conclusions in 2007 was.

We should be doing podcasts.

Goodness me, that you even knew what, I don't think

I'd even heard of podcasts in 2007.

And so I was, it suggest there's very few

recommendations and that was one of them.

And it, this, this document is around 2007.

It may even be slightly early, about 2006.

But it took me about 12 years to actually do it.

Yeah.

And that's not like me.

I'm normally quick at turning around.

So I then started doing, um.

Podcast called Research Records.

Which is a cross between Desert Island Discs and The Life Scientific.

And we've had Jim Al-Khalili from The Life Scientific as a guest, and that was

with, um, Tony Ryan, who's a chemist, OBE, and um, Marie Kinsey, who's an

emeritus professor of journalism.

And it's a journey about music and academic life.

And very proud of it.

It's been a really good series.

Uh, I presume it's come to an end as I step away from Sheffield as the producer.

I don't think they hosts, I, I'm speaking on their behalf.

I've told them that I'll find 'em another producer, but I think they, they

don't want to continue with me going.

So, I think they're very sad about me going if I'm honest.

So, and I produced one of my own called Communicable Research, which is about

health, communicating health research.

And I also produce one called The Overnight Podcast.

So that, so that's really my journey.

I, after Sheffield, I have an idea for a podcast series,

which I think will be good.

If I can get the guests.

I think it'll bring something.

Extra to, you know, I think, you know, your podcast brings something

different, and includes, you know, a wealth of really, really good guests.

And, uh, and hopefully I can kind of contribute to that pool of podcasts.

'cause I know you are advocate I love podcasts.

Yeah.

Ultimately.

If you were to say to me, if you're on a desert island, what would you prefer?

Having a radio or TV, radio wins hands down.

Oh, me as well.

Radio.

Anytime.

I still think it's very early days for podcasts because

I think that, um, what I like about podcasts and I'm sure you, you

know, you've found this experience.

It's a, it gives a safe space for people to talk.

It's not like working with the media.

It's, yeah.

It's, it is an opportunity and a safe space.

And this is.

I think it's quite an important point as, and I'm waffling on, but

where universities really miss out on podcasting, and I think this is huge,

and it's the same with video, is that for prospective students, it gives them a

insight into the people who may teach them if they go to that institution because all

they might see is a bit of text with no photograph on a staff profile or what they

might see is a photograph with some text.

Now I don't know if he or she's any good.

Yeah,

but if I hear them talking and I think these

know their stuff, and that's the kind of person I wanna sit down

in the lecture room and hear.

Yeah,

it's a massive opportunity.

It is.

And it, and you could, the little snippets, you know, just five

minutes here and there could make a huge difference, isn't it?

It doesn't have to be a huge, it doesn't have to be a huge commitment.

So yeah, also a big fan of audio.

Um.

Well, I think we should keep an eye on the time, but I do like to

ask all of my guests if they had a magic wand, what they would change

about the world that they work in.

So what would you like to use your magic wand for?

That is a really, really tough question.

'cause there is absolutely so much wrong in

higher education, sadly, as we know, perennial problems.

If I had a magic wand, I think, if I was like king for a day, I would

absolutely, we would be in this position where everybody, absolutely, everybody

has guaranteed time to carry out CPD.

And I am lucky that I've been able to do a job where largely my job is continual

CPD, so I'm continually developing and learning, and I got the bug for learning

late in the day when I went to college and not and, uh, it's not left me since.

And I think that there's an awful lot of people, and I think particularly, and I

know a lot of people, you know, people you speak to work in professional services

but a lot of their colleagues will not give themselves time for CPD or will not

have the time given to them, and they'll have line managers who don't support them.

And I think an organisation in higher education that does not carry out its

own R and R and its own development, and I'm not talking about let's have a

day out for wellbeing or a day out for dealing with difficult conversations and

things like that, which are useful or resilience, which we're seeing often.

But it's about the things that make you better at your job.

And actually you care about your job more, because I think if you are

better and then you care about the work, you take more interest in it and

you try and develop it and change it.

And I think the really valuable professional services people

are the ones who try and change their environment for the better.

So they don't just sit there and go, I do that because the person before me

did it and that's the way they did it.

You look at it and go, oh, right, that would work better if I did this.

And I, I want the freedom to do that.

And you do that by getting CPD and by given, giving the opportunity

to train and to learn and to be given the protected time to do that.

Yeah.

I think the organisation for every hour of that, you get many more hours back

in cost savings and I think that that would've been the magic wand because I

think professional services increasingly, and there's been that problem for years

around presenteeism, be at your desk.

You can't take time out to go and do something that's gonna be beneficial

for you and your colleagues.

And I think sadly, that will only probably get worse as the current climate.

But that's the thing I'd fix.

Yeah, I think that's a fantastic suggestion and yeah, definitely

this access to professional development has come up many times in this podcast

with many different guests and also other conversations I've had and it does seem

to be some seem to be a real problem and it's holding, holding people back.

And, uh, it need not be, as you say, these are meant to be educational organisations.

So, why don't they prioritise the education of their own staff?

But yes.

Yeah.

Let's hope you are king of the world one day, and, uh,

thank you so much for coming along.

If people want to get in touch with you, find out about your work, where

would you suggest that they go?

Where do you hang out most online.

I'm on BlueSky.

I mean, the jury's still out as to whether that's gonna really take off.

I think it's bubbling away at the moment.

It'd be interesting to see how it goes.

I hope it does.

I hope it does pick up that, that needs organisations to get on there

a bit more to to make that happen.

But I've got a website, andytattersall.com.

And there's a Linktree, so you'll find that on BlueSky.

If you search Andy Tattersall, you'll find me, or you'll

find a professor at Liverpool.

And I'm not, I'm not in, and you're not that one.

And hopefully I, hopefully I've largely got him knocked off the page rankings,

like a good information professional.

Fantastic.

Oh well, I'll get those links, put them in the show notes.

But for now, thank you so much for coming along and sharing your story.

Thank you.

It's been a pleasure.

Thanks for listening to Research Adjacent.

If you're listening in a podcast app, please check your subscribed and then

use the links in the episode description to find full show notes and to follow

the podcast on LinkedIn or Instagram.

You can also find all the links and other episodes at www.researchadjacent.com.

Research Adjacent is presented and produced by Sarah McLusky,

and the theme music is by Lemon Music Studios on Pixabay.

And you, yes you, get a big gold star for listening right to the end.

See you next time.