Seminar sessions with Royal Holloway

In our latest Seminar Sessions podcast, two academics from the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway discuss their experience of attending COP26, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, as official observers. Professor Dave Waltham, Professor of GeoPhysics  and Dr Rebecca Fisher, Lecturer and researcher in the Greenhouse Gas Laboratory, are both involved in teaching and research which engages with issues around Climate Change, greenhouse emissions and energy transition. In November they joined government leaders and representatives from across the world at COP26 in Glasgow,  where important measures to  address global warming were discussed and agreed, with hopes that it will lead to genuine cuts in emissions.

Course director of our MA in Immersive Storytelling, Mary Matheson, talks to us about the exciting immersive worlds of virtual reality and augmented reality, and how these emerging and fast-growing technologies can be used to tell stories in a way they’ve never been told before – allowing us to vividly experience different times, cultures, issues and places. She discusses her latest projects, including a collaborative piece exploring underground clubs for black people in nineteen-eighties London, as well as what impact covid-19 has had on virtual reality, and what the current drawbacks of the technology are.

Professor of Marketing and Consumer Research Pauline MacLaran, of the School of Business and Management, discusses the careful brand cultivation of the Royal Family, including the fine balance between their accessibility and mystique, their representation in popular culture such as the hit Netflix series The Crown, and the precarious position of the royal brand’s future.

Dr Steve Portugal,  Reader in Animal Behaviour and Physiology, in the Department of Biological Sciences at Royal Holloway, discusses his passion for birds and how they feature in his research and teaching. He also ponders why do pigeons get such a bad press,  and how important are birds in bringing us all closer to nature?

Professor Laura Sjoberg joins Summer and Greg to discuss why the study of gender is important in a conversation of politics and international relations. They talk about how marriage and sexual politics affect national borders today as well as historically and they discuss the book Professor Sjoberg is working on as well as the Gender Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London.