June 17, 2025 • 37 mins
Sarah’s guest for this episode is Andy Tattersall. Andy is a communications specialist who embraces using technology to help share research.
Sarah and Andy talk about
- Making himself so useful that a job was created especially for him
- Using technology to solve problems and always trying to make things better
- How he evolved from bedroom radio host to pirate station DJ to podcaster
- Being a lifelong learner and why more CPD time would benefit everyone
Find out more
- Read the show notes and transcript on the podcast website
- Check out Andy’s Linktree for all his podcasts and articles
- Connect to Andy on BlueSky
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Andy Tattersall (00:00):
Getting in early, picking on things, trying to play with it, find
out if it works, you know, particularlyat the moment with AI and then passing on
that knowledge, I think is really useful.
And it just takes one personto use it in a really fantastic
way, and everyone goes, wow.
Yeah.
And that's always been thecase with technology, isn't it?
I think the really valuable professionalservices people are the ones who try and
(00:25):
change their environment for the better.
Sarah McLusky (00:29):
Hello there.
I'm Sarah McLusky andthis is Research Adjacent.
Each episode I talk to amazing researchadjacent professionals about what
they do and why it makes a difference.
Keep listening to find out why wethink the research adjacent space
is where the real magic happens.
(00:57):
Hello, I'm your host, SarahMcLusky, and you are listening
to the Research Adjacent podcast.
In a minute, you'll be hearing fromtoday's guest, Andy Tattersall.
Now, depending on when you'relistening to this podcast, Andy is
either based at the University ofSheffield, or if it's after summer 2025.
He's now freelance.
Andy doesn't fit neatlyinto typical job categories.
(01:18):
I first met him through podcasting,but I had also seen him writing
a lot about the social media useand tentative rise of blue sky.
Well, it turns out what he reallyspecializes in is using technology
to solve communication problemsand suddenly it all makes sense.
A late comer to education, he hasevolved from a pirate radio DJ into
(01:38):
a research communications specialist.
We talk about his constantdrive to make things better.
While universities can be slow to adoptnew technologies, his love of good
conversation and why he would usesmagic 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
(02:00):
a guest and kind of on the other sideof the microphone for you, although
I'm sure we will get to that shortly.
Could you tell us a bitabout what it is that you do?
Andy Tattersall (02:09):
Okay.
So yeah, thanks for having me, Sarah.
And, uh, what do I do?
This is a tricky thing.
Even some of my colleagues willask me this, what exactly I do,
and some, some have claimed in thepast, all I do is mess about on the
internet, but, what I do, I think inessence what I'm, is a troubleshooter
and a creative ideas person.
And my job title, which iswhat I came up with and finally
(02:31):
managed to squeeze through at theUniversity of Sheffield, was Open
Research Communication Specialist,'cause I think that's what I do.
And before that I was aninformation specialist.
So my work I think is between the sortof the intersection, of communications,
'cause my first degree is journalismand information science, 'cause that's
(02:53):
my master's degree, underpinned by apractical set of skills that allow me
to make stuff, to solve problems andto help people primarily communicate
their research, 'cause I work inhealth research at the moment.
But as you'll know at the pointof recording this, I will be
leaving University of Sheffieldin a few months time to go do
(03:13):
this on my own for other people.
So I think really that is it.
And the way that people may understand itis that I see myself a bit of a research
equivalent of a learning technologist.
And I don't think I necessarilyexist because people are either
a marketing person or they're alearning technologist or they're an
(03:35):
a, a scholarly communications personand I think I do bits of everything.
I'm a jack of all tradesand maybe a master of some.
That's what I am.
Yeah.
Sarah McLusky (03:46):
So when you say you do lots of different bits, tell us a bit
about some of those different kindof projects and things that you are
working on or technologies that you use.
Andy Tattersall (03:55):
Um, examples might be, so I was part funded by the NIHR
in terms of knowledge mobilizingNIHR research into local government.
Sort of like make some kind of an impact.
So the kind of things that I've donethere as part of that work is, is making
infographic, it might be making animationthat explains what we're doing, but also,
uh, only this week I put together a publicengagement event as part of a festival
(04:19):
that runs over a month in Sheffield calledFestival of Debate, where I had colleagues
who I worked with on this project alongwith the Sheffield's Director of Public
Health, Greg Fell, and I, I had thoseturn up and have a panel discussion about
this topic in front of a live audience.
And that event was totallyput together by me.
Now putting events together isn'tsomething that I necessarily do.
(04:42):
What I, I certainly do is I, I lookat 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 ofmyself as a fantasy football kind
of person that I think that'd be agreat speaker and that'd be a great
(05:03):
speaker and let's get them together.
And I've come up with an ideaof a way we can badge it.
Uh, and such like.
Other things that I've done, which arenot necessarily technology enabled.
10 years ago I started writing retreats.
That was because I had to finish a bookon altmetrics that I'd been commissioned
to do, and I was struggling to do it.
And the writing retreats called WriteClub have run for the last 10 years.
(05:26):
And I, I did a quick, um, checkon on the data since lockdown,
see how many people had attendedfrom the University of Sheffield.
And it was just shy of 600 peoplewho had been to these sessions.
And this is where people get togetherand write, and it's based on a Pomodoro
technique where you take five minutebreaks, you write for 25 minutes.
We have yoga videos, we havemeditation star and things like that.
(05:50):
And some of 'em, I just play musicthroughout the day and people
listen to music in the background.
And it's a real good way to bringpeople across the campus together.
That is a sort of what I would say isthe kind of the antithesis of what I do,
which is to kind of push out technology.
Sarah McLusky (06:05):
Yeah.
Andy Tattersall (06:05):
And to, to promote things.
Whether that's altmetrics, whether that'sthe use of podcasting, whether that's
the use of making videos, whether that'swriting blogs, social media and such.
Like, so I'm an advocate for allof those things, and I think that's
what I'm kind of largely known for.
But the kind of the WriteClub was a byproduct.
Some of the other things I've done isI started a series about 15 years ago
(06:28):
called Bite-Size that still runs atSheffield, which are 20 minute talks on
Technologies to or ideasto help people work better.
I was the first person at Sheffieldto kinda spot massive online open
courses, and we ran the first threeof those I think in 2012, 2013.
And we had 8,000 studentssign up for them.
(06:49):
Uh, and again, that wasme spotting something.
So, and getting, getting buy-in.
Sarah McLusky (06:54):
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 likeyou're a bit of a magpie.
You're just like,
Andy Tattersall (07:00):
Absolutely.
Sarah McLusky (07:01):
There's a thing over here and there's a thing over
here and let's put them togetherand see what we can come up with.
Andy Tattersall (07:07):
Absolutely.
I've been definitely a magpie for about15 years, and I, I'm a shambrarian
as I've been told many times, so I'msomeone who affiliates very strongly
with the academic library community.
I know loads of them.
I've spoke at dozensof library conferences.
I've given invited talks at, youknow, CILIP and international Business
Librarians Conference at InternationalClinical Librarians Conference.
(07:29):
I'm not a librarian.
I have probably a librarian'sbrain that I like to curate things.
Put things in order andlike to naturally share.
And help people and solveproblems, which I think is a
lot of work that librarians do.
But the other flip side is one previousmanager said to me many years ago,
I'm also a bit like a bull at a gate.
(07:49):
And I've changed that because
But the problem with the bull at thegate sometimes is that you rush in
and you, you do get things wrong.
And so I've sort of becomea little more pragmatic.
And maybe that's the thing withage, as you get older, you become a
bit more, I won't say conservative.
A little more
Sarah McLusky (08:07):
cautious.
Andy Tattersall (08:08):
Cautious, yeah.
And I'll still take risks and I'll stillpush things out and I'm still prepared
to annoy people because I think I mightbe 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 dosomething, then there is an evidence
(08:31):
base hopefully behind a lot of it.
Um, even though the evidence mightbe weak or not, not substantiated
at the time 'cause it's early daysI'm certainly not a futurologist.
Sarah McLusky (08:42):
No.
Andy Tattersall (08:43):
But I've always tried to lead from the front and I've always
tried to bring people along with me andcertainly work with the idea of bringing
people along with me who want to come.
Yeah.
I. Many years ago that you can reallytry 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 worldwho unfortunately will never, ever change
and they're not worth the investmentof your limited time and energy.
(09:06):
But there is this huge swathe inthe middle, you know, the kind of
on and that kind of, diffusion ofinnovation curve, there's that huge
group of people who are interested.
And I've been tried, I've tried tobe attuned to the issues that impact
them, the inequalities that impactthem, the time issues, particularly
if you're part-time, if you are,if you are female, you know, you
(09:28):
take the caring responsibilitiesinvariably and all those problems.
So Write club is a good exampleof that because since I've run it.
Um, and you know, I've had nearly600 people attend since 2020.
On top of all those who attendedthe five, six years before that,
it is roughly 95% female attended.
Sarah McLusky (09:48):
Interesting.
Yeah.
Andy Tattersall (09:50):
Yeah.
Sarah McLusky (09:51):
They're the people who most need that space, perhaps
that, that's somewhere to gather?
Andy Tattersall (09:56):
I think so.
I think that they're more likely tobe they're more likely to struggle
time-wise because of other demands.
Also, I think are possibly moreopen to working that way as well.
I think that might be a reason as toit that they actually think, there's
nothing wrong about going into a roomwith a bunch of people to write together.
(10:18):
I think there's a lot of blokes youmight go, oh, you don't need to do that.
Yeah.
You know, a bit of, I thinkthere'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 pleasedwith that because I do want to bring
equity to research communicationsbecause it's not just those who
(10:42):
are resource poor, time poor.
I think it's also that I. Research,particularly in institutions
has a habit of very muchgoing with the easy, big wins.
And they might be that'swon 10 million pounds, that
project's won 10 million pounds.
That project is going to solvethis particular cancer, et cetera.
(11:02):
And a lot of the very, very smallprojects that make some really, really
decent societal impact and some changeget overlooked because it's one person
in a department doing one thing thatjust it's not seen hot or sexy enough.
Yeah.
Or attention grabbing.
And I think that there's more to be doneto give these people a leg up because
these little seed investments of, ofresearch and time and these little
(11:26):
pots of money can lead to big thingsthat lead to a wider societal impact.
Sarah McLusky (11:30):
Yeah, definitely.
And I think.
Not only in terms of helping theresearch get, but like you say, the
help that you can do to get thatresearch out into the world and
the difference that that can make.
Because often the big projectswill have a budget for things.
They might even have a memberof staff on the team who can
(11:50):
do all their communicationsand 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 littlebit of time, a little bit of help can
make a big difference to them, can't it?
Andy Tattersall (12:03):
A absolutely.
You know, a little bit of money cango the right way if it's used right.
And the problem with lot of big projectsis when they put in bids, you know,
historically anyway, and I think thingsare 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
(12:23):
much thought for it or the alternativewas, uh, we don't do anything.
We get to the end and oh mygoodness, we now need to start
thinking about telling people.
And the pot of money has beentaken 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 ideaof, thinking about things in the
(12:46):
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 particularlyimportant when you are working
directly with the public, because oneof the problems with research is it
parachutes into a cohort in society.
It does some work and it pulls out.
And I think that theseproblems are often endemic.
(13:08):
I, you know, working in healthresearch, we, we are looking at
often endemic problems that are verywicked, that can't be solved by one
necessarily solution or, or person.
And that thinking about campaignsextends 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 getis that stories are often told of
(13:31):
in the frame of 5 million poundswon by the University of whatever.
Yeah.
And I think the, yeah,the money is so important.
Obviously it allows you to do thosethings, but really the story is what's
the impact and who's the lives andwhat's the breakthrough gonna be?
Because I think that'swhat the public care about.
They don't know if 5 million poundsis a lot of money it in, in a
(13:54):
lot of cases obviously it isn't.
Yeah.
But what they want toknow is, will my mom.
Beat this illness.
Sarah McLusky (14:02):
Yeah.
Andy Tattersall (14:02):
Will my dad get well?
Yeah.
Will I, you know, and I thinkthat's quite, that's the, quite
the important thing, the money.
I don't think newspapers areinterested in the money usually.
Yeah.
They're interested inthe, the actual impact.
So, but I also think that fora large extent, and this is.
This is across the board.
Whether you're working as an individualtrying to do things or working as a
(14:23):
group who may have an administrator.
I think it's all about little1% increments, trying to make
everything a little bit better.
How can we make ourcomms a bit more visible?
How can we make this bit of work a bitmore impactful, how can we actually
manage to reach this cohort of society?
How can we manage toreach this policy maker?
And they're all little 1% that you, youhave to think about all the time because
(14:46):
you know, you think about and um go intosomething in, in, in Sheffield I forgot
the gentleman's name now, but he, he'sa kind of a sports psych psychologist
who worked with I don't wanna say hisname 'cause I'll get it wrong, but,
uh, um, he worked with British cycling.
And the reason British cycling was sucha huge success throughout the noughties
was that he took this this idea.
(15:09):
His, his business iscalled Chimp Management.
Uh, I wanna say Steven Peters, I couldbe wrong, Steve Peters, but he went
and they looked at 1% increments.
And those increments could be washingyour hands after you've been to the loo
to reduce infection, because if cyclistscatch a cold, they can't practice.
Yeah.
These little things like that.
Yeah.
(15:29):
Doing something to this pieceof the technology to improve it.
Sarah McLusky (15:32):
Yeah.
Andy Tattersall (15:33):
Um, habits, habit forming.
So I think that that's quite important.
Sarah McLusky (15:37):
Yeah.
And it all adds up over time, doesn't it?
Absolutely.
These, absolutely these littleimprovements here and there, you know, it
doesn't always need to be about the bigsplash, about the big development, like
you say, the things that get reportedthese big grant wins and things like that.
And actually at the end of the day, itdoesn't always make much difference.
So one thing I think people willbe really curious to know is how
you got into doing this work.
(15:58):
You mentioned.
Having been, you know, doing learningtechnology and things like that.
But yeah, tell us about your journey.
Andy Tattersall (16:05):
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 asa baby, so life didn't start
great and I flunked to school.
Had a good time throughout my teens and mytwenties, and then decided needed to get
(16:28):
an education and I went off to college.
Cut.
Long story short, went anddid some A levels age 26.
Felt massively outta my depth.
Then managed to get a place at Sheffieldon their journalism degree, which
was at the time I think they had 1400applicants, and I was very lucky to get
on as a mature student and felt outta mydepth, but it was an amazing experience.
(16:50):
And then went off to be a journalistfor a short while, sports journalist
for the Press Association.
And did journalism as well, doingjournalism in the background.
And I've continued to do that incapacity doing music and culture.
But I, saw a job at theUniversity of Sheffield.
I went there doing theirinter library loans.
Sarah McLusky (17:08):
Okay.
Andy Tattersall (17:10):
And it was a very overwhelming job.
It was a, it was a paper-based joband after about a year I went off to
a, an event and came back and said, Ithink we need to digitize the system.
This was in my academic department andwe 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.
(17:32):
And I did that for a few yearsand started doing other things
that were not part of my job.
So I redesigned thelibrary 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 esteemedacademic in the evidence-based
synthesis world and evidence-basedlibrarianship he's led in that
(17:56):
and innovated from the start.
He's, he is, he is the kind of thegodfather of, of, of a lot of stuff.
Uh, Andrew Booth decided therewas a job for me and he managed
to get funding with anotherprofessor 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 thingsaround, you know, I started doing blogs.
(18:20):
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.
Sarah McLusky (18:35):
Yeah.
Andy Tattersall (18:35):
Um, which has been a huge.
I'm huge privilege.
Sarah McLusky (18:38):
Yeah.
Andy Tattersall (18:39):
And I've been trusted.
It comes with an awful lot of downfallsand responsibilities and, and concerns.
It's not, it's not all, uh, it's not allwonderful, but it's it has been, I've
been blessed that I've been supportedin that area to go off and do that.
So what I would've said is, is thatprobably around 2007, 2008, I probably
was a proto learning technologist.
(19:01):
I was very interested in the learningside 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, oursort of section at the time, professor
Simon Dixon, who recently retired.
He's a health economist and he said, youneed to figure out what you want to do.
(19:24):
Do you wanna go and do research ordo you want to go and do teaching?
'cause I was sort ofstraddling both to some extent.
And I went away and thought.
The learning technologists are startingto really take off in the institution.
There were people there who'd beendoing that for years before me uh, who'd
been doing that in various capacities.
And the whole movement wascertainly really, really
(19:45):
getting going on institutions.
And I thought, actually there'snothing happening in terms of research.
And I'm, and I'm talking aboutbeing a, a research technician.
I'm not talking, I'm not talkingabout research communications.
It was purely about thedigital side of things.
The digital literacy, that'severything from, Google apps and
I was, I was very much the kind ofthe lead for Google at Sheffield.
It, it implement, notimplementing it, but certainly.
(20:08):
Being the person for it to go out andspeak to departments and show them.
Because prior to us getting Googlein around 2010, I was already
using Google in the institution.
And again, this is before we'rethinking about information governance.
You know, I was using the Googleemail to get set up accounts.
Yeah, I'd got Blogger running,I'd got YouTube running, uh, I was
(20:29):
using SketchUp and stuff like that.
So I decided that I'd go downthe research route, and that was
where it, it was for me and that'sreally where I've been ever since.
Underpinned by informationand technology literacy.
So, uh, people do invite me to give talksabout technology and adoption and that's
something I've learned a lot about.
(20:50):
How do you get people to buy in stuffand what are the issues about that?
Sarah McLusky (20:55):
Yeah, that's making me think of the work you've done recently
about the move of organisations awayfrom Twitter and towards other platforms
and like you say, it's that period ofadoption and what makes people move and
when do they move and that sort of thing.
Yeah, really interesting.
Andy Tattersall (21:13):
Yeah, and what I've sort of learned is that universities are herds.
They kind of follow each other eventually.
And they sit and watchwhat others are doing.
And there's not really truly that manythat are truly freethinking or radical.
You know, you'll get a universitythat'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.
(21:37):
But I think they do follow,quite often in herds.
I think they're veryslow to move as a whole.
I predicted that with Twitter whenElon Musk took over, I said, well,
people are gonna jump 'cause you canmake 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 healthdecision or personal decision.
(21:59):
But as an organisations,it's really tricky.
And I, and I, and it's proven to be sowith Twitter that they're they may be
investing elsewhere, but the majorityare still not jumping off that one yet.
. Um, and, uh, I don't think thingswill change on Twitter, so it will be
interesting to see how that one plays out.
Sarah McLusky (22:16):
And then, and then you mentioned also looking at how things
like AI might be starting to come into organisations, what difference that
makes in places like universities.
What have you found there?
Andy Tattersall (22:28):
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, isif 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 anawful lot of researchers out there
(22:48):
who are leveraging it really well now.
I think they're probably gotsome really good workflows
and they're being very savvy.
Whether they're telling other peopleabout it will vary from person to person.
Uh, but I think we're probablyseeing for all of those, we're seeing
a, a probably two or three morethat are doing it very badly and
potentially also in a corrupt way.
(23:09):
So I, the issue I've got with AIis, uh, certainly from the platforms
I've looked at, is it's beingshoehorned into a lot of stuff.
And I think it's detracting away fromthe quality of the said platform.
And I think that people not necessarilyare in a position to make a good value
judgment as to whether that works well.
(23:31):
Uh, so what would be goodwould be more conversations.
It's something I wanna think moreabout, maybe even develop a course
on, in terms of dissemination.
Uh, I, I know initial, conversationsand I get this, you know, you,
you speak to perhaps people, mediapeople, people who might work in press
very cautious and nervous about it.
Because they're worried aboutit, undermining their roles.
(23:51):
And I, I get that.
I get that why people in the arts andhumanities are particularly wary of AI.
But I do think that it isan opportunity in this area.
I think it's an opportunityfor accessibility.
I think it's an opportunityto develop some very inventive
and creative ways of working.
You know, a good example would be youlook at image creation just a year ago
(24:13):
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 withwonky hands and skewed faces.
Whereas now if you do something,you can get something that's quite.
Decent with a relativelystraightforward prompt.
(24:34):
That's my experience of late.
That's good.
But again, I think it goes back to theissue of inequalities because with all
of these AI tools, they've got to makemoney 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 remember2004 to around 2007 was a huge expansion
(24:58):
of web tools that came out that justdid everything and it was amazing.
And then you realize actuallya lot of them aren't that good.
They don't improve your life anda lot of 'em don't work well.
And then some of the ones that did workwell are, have been created by a PhD
student who realizes that he or sheneeds to get a an income and that's
not paying them and it disappears.
And I think we'll see this with AI.
(25:19):
I think we'll see platforms rise fall,we'll see people who can't leverage
it, make money and we'll also seean 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 takingvery different approaches and some are
(25:39):
trying to lock down as much as they can.
They see it as aninformation governance issue.
They see it as a literacy issue.
And perhaps some of the studentsmight even be better equipped than
some of the staff in using thesetools and finding ways to do that.
And some of 'em might be running with it.
And doing some really interestingstuff and some having some
really interesting conversations.
I know at Sheffield there's some reallygood people that are behind this, that
(26:01):
are doing, doing some very interestingthings, sharing things that I don't
understand, you know, around data andcode and how to carry out research.
And they're doing, they're doingsome really, really good stuff.
But for the majority of academics, theyprobably 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
Sarah McLusky (26:21):
I would say that's exactly
Andy Tattersall (26:22):
how I feel so,
And it just takes one personto use it in a really fantastic
way, and everyone goes, wow.
Yeah.
And that's always been thecase with technology, isn't it?
You know?
Yeah.
Someone goes off,
Sarah McLusky (26:34):
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 theyinvented text messaging and they
didn't think anybody would want it.
Yeah.
And then they, and then itjust, and everybody went, oh,
actually this is really good.
Yeah.
So,
Andy Tattersall (26:49):
yeah.
Sarah McLusky (26:50):
We shall see.
We shall see.
Yeah.
Um, but one technology that you havereally embraced is podcasting, isn't it?
That's, and that's howour paths crossed, um Yes.
In the first place.
What is it that you find so interestingor enjoyable about podcasting?
Andy Tattersall (27:07):
So again, going back many years, the journey starts when
I was probably about 12, 11 listeningto Radio Luxembourg under the covers
as a little boy and fascinated byradio, and then becoming an avid
record collector at the age of 11.
Making my own radioshows called Tatt on Two.
Sarah McLusky (27:26):
Excellent.
Are there recordings of this anywhere?
Andy Tattersall (27:28):
There isn't.
They were on cassettes and they were givento friends along with Tatt on Two pens.
Which were pens with the word Tatt onTwo liquid papered onto them, and so I
would've been about 13, 14 at the time.
I'd record a record and thenrecord a microphone and me
talking in between and, yeah.
Pause tape, do the do stuff.
(27:49):
And then I got into DJingin the sort of mid eighties.
I be, I became a hip hop dj and so I canscratch 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, becamea pirate radio DJ for six years.
And, and was on a few stations, a coupleof very infamous ones in, in Sheffield,
(28:11):
very well known Fantasy FM and SCR, whichwhen I've been featured in interviews, you
get colleagues in meetings and they'll saywere 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 Iwent to do journalism, which
included broadcast journalism.
And I then went sort of, uh,probably, the mid two thousands, I
(28:37):
was approached by a radio stationonline, a hip hop radio station
who was an international one known.
And I was persuaded to kind of startdoing a show, which I did for a few years.
And then I moved on to anotherstation and I did that.
And the weird thing is I took quite awhile to bring it into a professional
setting . So I didn't do my first podcastuntil, I think my first ones around 2018,
(29:00):
2019, and they're one person podcast.
It's me talking about athing scripted, right?
Yeah.
So it's talking about, so I did those andI, I didn't, I didn't, we didn't have the
facilities, I don't think, at Sheffield atthe time to really do anything properly.
So I did that, but I found a reportI wrote in around 2007 around
customer relationship managementand how we approached students and
(29:22):
what other universities were doing.
And I was asked to dig thereport out a few years ago,
about four or five years ago.
And I looked through the conclusions andone of the key conclusions in 2007 was.
We should be doing podcasts.
Sarah McLusky (29:35):
Goodness me, that you even knew what, I don't think
I'd even heard of podcasts in 2007.
Andy Tattersall (29:40):
And so I was, it suggest there's very few
recommendations and that was one of them.
And it, this, thisdocument is around 2007.
It may even be slightly early, about 2006.
But it took me about 12years to actually do it.
Sarah McLusky (29:53):
Yeah.
Andy Tattersall (29:53):
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 DesertIsland Discs and The Life Scientific.
And we've had Jim Al-Khalili from TheLife Scientific as a guest, and that was
with, um, Tony Ryan, who's a chemist,OBE, and um, Marie Kinsey, who's an
(30:16):
emeritus professor of journalism.
And it's a journey aboutmusic 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 Istep 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 'emanother producer, but I think they, they
don't want to continue with me going.
(30:36):
So, I think they're very sadabout me going if I'm honest.
So, and I produced one of my own calledCommunicable Research, which is about
health, communicating health research.
And I also produce onecalled The Overnight Podcast.
So that, so that's really my journey.
I, after Sheffield, I havean idea for a podcast series,
which I think will be good.
(30:58):
If I can get the guests.
I think it'll bring something.
Extra to, you know, I think, youknow, your podcast brings something
different, and includes, you know, awealth of really, really good guests.
And, uh, and hopefully I can kind ofcontribute to that pool of podcasts.
'cause I know you areadvocate I love podcasts.
Yeah.
Ultimately.
If you were to say to me, if you're ona desert island, what would you prefer?
(31:20):
Having a radio or TV,radio wins hands down.
Sarah McLusky (31:23):
Oh, me as well.
Radio.
Anytime.
Andy Tattersall (31:25):
I still think it's very early days for podcasts because
I think that, um, what I like aboutpodcasts and I'm sure you, you
know, you've found this experience.
It's a, it gives a safespace for people to talk.
It's not like working with the media.
It's, yeah.
It's, it is an opportunityand a safe space.
And this is.
I think it's quite an importantpoint as, and I'm waffling on, but
(31:47):
where universities really miss out onpodcasting, and I think this is huge,
and it's the same with video, is thatfor prospective students, it gives them a
insight into the people who may teach themif they go to that institution because all
they might see is a bit of text with nophotograph on a staff profile or what they
might see is a photograph with some text.
(32:09):
Now I don't know if he or she's any good.
Sarah McLusky (32:11):
Yeah,
Andy Tattersall (32:11):
but if I hear them talking and I think these
know their stuff, and that's thekind of person I wanna sit down
in the lecture room and hear.
Sarah McLusky (32:18):
Yeah,
Andy Tattersall (32:19):
it's a massive opportunity.
Sarah McLusky (32:20):
It is.
And it, and you could, the littlesnippets, you know, just five
minutes here and there couldmake a huge difference, isn't it?
It doesn't have to be a huge, itdoesn't have to be a huge commitment.
So yeah, also a big fan of audio.
Um.
Well, I think we should keep aneye on the time, but I do like to
ask all of my guests if they had amagic wand, what they would change
about the world that they work in.
(32:40):
So what would you like touse your magic wand for?
Andy Tattersall (32:45):
That is a really, really tough question.
'cause there is absolutelyso much wrong in
higher education, sadly, aswe know, perennial problems.
If I had a magic wand, I think, ifI was like king for a day, I would
(33:05):
absolutely, we would be in this positionwhere everybody, absolutely, everybody
has guaranteed time to carry out CPD.
And I am lucky that I've been able to doa job where largely my job is continual
CPD, so I'm continually developing andlearning, and I got the bug for learning
(33:28):
late in the day when I went to collegeand not and, uh, it's not left me since.
And I think that there's an awful lot ofpeople, and I think particularly, and I
know a lot of people, you know, peopleyou speak to work in professional services
but a lot of their colleagues will notgive themselves time for CPD or will not
have the time given to them, and they'llhave line managers who don't support them.
(33:49):
And I think an organisation in highereducation 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 fordealing with difficult conversations and
things like that, which are useful orresilience, which we're seeing often.
But it's about the things thatmake you better at your job.
(34:13):
And actually you care about yourjob more, because I think if you are
better and then you care about thework, you take more interest in it and
you try and develop it and change it.
And I think the really valuableprofessional services people
are the ones who try and changetheir 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.
(34:34):
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 andby given, giving the opportunity
to train and to learn and to begiven the protected time to do that.
Yeah.
I think the organisation for every hourof that, you get many more hours back
(34:55):
in cost savings and I think that thatwould'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 dosomething that's gonna be beneficial
for you and your colleagues.
And I think sadly, that will onlyprobably get worse as the current climate.
(35:15):
But that's the thing I'd fix.
Sarah McLusky (35:17):
Yeah, I think that's a fantastic suggestion and yeah, definitely
this access to professional developmenthas come up many times in this podcast
with many different guests and also otherconversations I've had and it does seem
to be some seem to be a real problemand it's holding, holding people back.
And, uh, it need not be, as you say, theseare meant to be educational organisations.
(35:39):
So, why don't they prioritisethe education of their own staff?
But yes.
Andy Tattersall (35:44):
Yeah.
Sarah McLusky (35:44):
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 withyou, find out about your work, where
would you suggest that they go?
Where do you hang out most online.
Andy Tattersall (35:57):
I'm on BlueSky.
I mean, the jury's still out as towhether 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, thatneeds 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, soyou'll find that on BlueSky.
(36:17):
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 largelygot him knocked off the page rankings,
like a good information professional.
Sarah McLusky (36:30):
Fantastic.
Oh well, I'll get those links,put them in the show notes.
But for now, thank you so much forcoming along and sharing your story.
Andy Tattersall (36:38):
Thank you.
It's been a pleasure.
Sarah McLusky (36:40):
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 descriptionto find full show notes and to follow
the podcast on LinkedIn or Instagram.
You can also find all the links and otherepisodes at www.researchadjacent.com.
Research Adjacent is presentedand produced by Sarah McLusky,
(37:00):
and the theme music is byLemon Music Studios on Pixabay.
And you, yes you, get a big goldstar for listening right to the end.
See you next time.
Getting in early, picking on things, trying to play with it, find
out if it works, you know, particularlyat the moment with AI and then passing on
that knowledge, I think is really useful.
And it just takes one personto use it in a really fantastic
way, and everyone goes, wow.
Yeah.
And that's always been thecase with technology, isn't it?
I think the really valuable professionalservices people are the ones who try and
(00:25):
change their environment for the better.
Sarah McLusky (00:29):
Hello there.
I'm Sarah McLusky andthis is Research Adjacent.
Each episode I talk to amazing researchadjacent professionals about what
they do and why it makes a difference.
Keep listening to find out why wethink the research adjacent space
is where the real magic happens.
(00:57):
Hello, I'm your host, SarahMcLusky, and you are listening
to the Research Adjacent podcast.
In a minute, you'll be hearing fromtoday's guest, Andy Tattersall.
Now, depending on when you'relistening to this podcast, Andy is
either based at the University ofSheffield, or if it's after summer 2025.
He's now freelance.
Andy doesn't fit neatlyinto typical job categories.
(01:18):
I first met him through podcasting,but I had also seen him writing
a lot about the social media useand tentative rise of blue sky.
Well, it turns out what he reallyspecializes in is using technology
to solve communication problemsand suddenly it all makes sense.
A late comer to education, he hasevolved from a pirate radio DJ into
(01:38):
a research communications specialist.
We talk about his constantdrive to make things better.
While universities can be slow to adoptnew technologies, his love of good
conversation and why he would usesmagic 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
(02:00):
a guest and kind of on the other sideof the microphone for you, although
I'm sure we will get to that shortly.
Could you tell us a bitabout what it is that you do?
Andy Tattersall (02:09):
Okay.
So yeah, thanks for having me, Sarah.
And, uh, what do I do?
This is a tricky thing.
Even some of my colleagues willask me this, what exactly I do,
and some, some have claimed in thepast, all I do is mess about on the
internet, but, what I do, I think inessence what I'm, is a troubleshooter
and a creative ideas person.
And my job title, which iswhat I came up with and finally
(02:31):
managed to squeeze through at theUniversity of Sheffield, was Open
Research Communication Specialist,'cause I think that's what I do.
And before that I was aninformation specialist.
So my work I think is between the sortof the intersection, of communications,
'cause my first degree is journalismand information science, 'cause that's
(02:53):
my master's degree, underpinned by apractical set of skills that allow me
to make stuff, to solve problems andto help people primarily communicate
their research, 'cause I work inhealth research at the moment.
But as you'll know at the pointof recording this, I will be
leaving University of Sheffieldin a few months time to go do
(03:13):
this on my own for other people.
So I think really that is it.
And the way that people may understand itis that I see myself a bit of a research
equivalent of a learning technologist.
And I don't think I necessarilyexist because people are either
a marketing person or they're alearning technologist or they're an
(03:35):
a, a scholarly communications personand I think I do bits of everything.
I'm a jack of all tradesand maybe a master of some.
That's what I am.
Yeah.
Sarah McLusky (03:46):
So when you say you do lots of different bits, tell us a bit
about some of those different kindof projects and things that you are
working on or technologies that you use.
Andy Tattersall (03:55):
Um, examples might be, so I was part funded by the NIHR
in terms of knowledge mobilizingNIHR research into local government.
Sort of like make some kind of an impact.
So the kind of things that I've donethere as part of that work is, is making
infographic, it might be making animationthat explains what we're doing, but also,
uh, only this week I put together a publicengagement event as part of a festival
(04:19):
that runs over a month in Sheffield calledFestival of Debate, where I had colleagues
who I worked with on this project alongwith the Sheffield's Director of Public
Health, Greg Fell, and I, I had thoseturn up and have a panel discussion about
this topic in front of a live audience.
And that event was totallyput together by me.
Now putting events together isn'tsomething that I necessarily do.
(04:42):
What I, I certainly do is I, I lookat 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 ofmyself as a fantasy football kind
of person that I think that'd be agreat speaker and that'd be a great
(05:03):
speaker and let's get them together.
And I've come up with an ideaof a way we can badge it.
Uh, and such like.
Other things that I've done, which arenot necessarily technology enabled.
10 years ago I started writing retreats.
That was because I had to finish a bookon altmetrics that I'd been commissioned
to do, and I was struggling to do it.
And the writing retreats called WriteClub have run for the last 10 years.
(05:26):
And I, I did a quick, um, checkon on the data since lockdown,
see how many people had attendedfrom the University of Sheffield.
And it was just shy of 600 peoplewho had been to these sessions.
And this is where people get togetherand write, and it's based on a Pomodoro
technique where you take five minutebreaks, you write for 25 minutes.
We have yoga videos, we havemeditation star and things like that.
(05:50):
And some of 'em, I just play musicthroughout the day and people
listen to music in the background.
And it's a real good way to bringpeople across the campus together.
That is a sort of what I would say isthe kind of the antithesis of what I do,
which is to kind of push out technology.
Sarah McLusky (06:05):
Yeah.
Andy Tattersall (06:05):
And to, to promote things.
Whether that's altmetrics, whether that'sthe use of podcasting, whether that's
the use of making videos, whether that'swriting blogs, social media and such.
Like, so I'm an advocate for allof those things, and I think that's
what I'm kind of largely known for.
But the kind of the WriteClub was a byproduct.
Some of the other things I've done isI started a series about 15 years ago
(06:28):
called Bite-Size that still runs atSheffield, which are 20 minute talks on
Technologies to or ideasto help people work better.
I was the first person at Sheffieldto kinda spot massive online open
courses, and we ran the first threeof those I think in 2012, 2013.
And we had 8,000 studentssign up for them.
(06:49):
Uh, and again, that wasme spotting something.
So, and getting, getting buy-in.
Sarah McLusky (06:54):
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 likeyou're a bit of a magpie.
You're just like,
Andy Tattersall (07:00):
Absolutely.
Sarah McLusky (07:01):
There's a thing over here and there's a thing over
here and let's put them togetherand see what we can come up with.
Andy Tattersall (07:07):
Absolutely.
I've been definitely a magpie for about15 years, and I, I'm a shambrarian
as I've been told many times, so I'msomeone who affiliates very strongly
with the academic library community.
I know loads of them.
I've spoke at dozensof library conferences.
I've given invited talks at, youknow, CILIP and international Business
Librarians Conference at InternationalClinical Librarians Conference.
(07:29):
I'm not a librarian.
I have probably a librarian'sbrain that I like to curate things.
Put things in order andlike to naturally share.
And help people and solveproblems, which I think is a
lot of work that librarians do.
But the other flip side is one previousmanager said to me many years ago,
I'm also a bit like a bull at a gate.
(07:49):
And I've changed that because
But the problem with the bull at thegate sometimes is that you rush in
and you, you do get things wrong.
And so I've sort of becomea little more pragmatic.
And maybe that's the thing withage, as you get older, you become a
bit more, I won't say conservative.
A little more
Sarah McLusky (08:07):
cautious.
Andy Tattersall (08:08):
Cautious, yeah.
And I'll still take risks and I'll stillpush things out and I'm still prepared
to annoy people because I think I mightbe 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 dosomething, then there is an evidence
(08:31):
base hopefully behind a lot of it.
Um, even though the evidence mightbe weak or not, not substantiated
at the time 'cause it's early daysI'm certainly not a futurologist.
Sarah McLusky (08:42):
No.
Andy Tattersall (08:43):
But I've always tried to lead from the front and I've always
tried to bring people along with me andcertainly work with the idea of bringing
people along with me who want to come.
Yeah.
I. Many years ago that you can reallytry 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 worldwho unfortunately will never, ever change
and they're not worth the investmentof your limited time and energy.
(09:06):
But there is this huge swathe inthe middle, you know, the kind of
on and that kind of, diffusion ofinnovation curve, there's that huge
group of people who are interested.
And I've been tried, I've tried tobe attuned to the issues that impact
them, the inequalities that impactthem, the time issues, particularly
if you're part-time, if you are,if you are female, you know, you
(09:28):
take the caring responsibilitiesinvariably and all those problems.
So Write club is a good exampleof that because since I've run it.
Um, and you know, I've had nearly600 people attend since 2020.
On top of all those who attendedthe five, six years before that,
it is roughly 95% female attended.
Sarah McLusky (09:48):
Interesting.
Yeah.
Andy Tattersall (09:50):
Yeah.
Sarah McLusky (09:51):
They're the people who most need that space, perhaps
that, that's somewhere to gather?
Andy Tattersall (09:56):
I think so.
I think that they're more likely tobe they're more likely to struggle
time-wise because of other demands.
Also, I think are possibly moreopen to working that way as well.
I think that might be a reason as toit that they actually think, there's
nothing wrong about going into a roomwith a bunch of people to write together.
(10:18):
I think there's a lot of blokes youmight go, oh, you don't need to do that.
Yeah.
You know, a bit of, I thinkthere'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 pleasedwith that because I do want to bring
equity to research communicationsbecause it's not just those who
(10:42):
are resource poor, time poor.
I think it's also that I. Research,particularly in institutions
has a habit of very muchgoing with the easy, big wins.
And they might be that'swon 10 million pounds, that
project's won 10 million pounds.
That project is going to solvethis particular cancer, et cetera.
(11:02):
And a lot of the very, very smallprojects that make some really, really
decent societal impact and some changeget overlooked because it's one person
in a department doing one thing thatjust it's not seen hot or sexy enough.
Yeah.
Or attention grabbing.
And I think that there's more to be doneto give these people a leg up because
these little seed investments of, ofresearch and time and these little
(11:26):
pots of money can lead to big thingsthat lead to a wider societal impact.
Sarah McLusky (11:30):
Yeah, definitely.
And I think.
Not only in terms of helping theresearch get, but like you say, the
help that you can do to get thatresearch out into the world and
the difference that that can make.
Because often the big projectswill have a budget for things.
They might even have a memberof staff on the team who can
(11:50):
do all their communicationsand 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 littlebit of time, a little bit of help can
make a big difference to them, can't it?
Andy Tattersall (12:03):
A absolutely.
You know, a little bit of money cango the right way if it's used right.
And the problem with lot of big projectsis when they put in bids, you know,
historically anyway, and I think thingsare 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
(12:23):
much thought for it or the alternativewas, uh, we don't do anything.
We get to the end and oh mygoodness, we now need to start
thinking about telling people.
And the pot of money has beentaken 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 ideaof, thinking about things in the
(12:46):
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 particularlyimportant when you are working
directly with the public, because oneof the problems with research is it
parachutes into a cohort in society.
It does some work and it pulls out.
And I think that theseproblems are often endemic.
(13:08):
I, you know, working in healthresearch, we, we are looking at
often endemic problems that are verywicked, that can't be solved by one
necessarily solution or, or person.
And that thinking about campaignsextends 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 getis that stories are often told of
(13:31):
in the frame of 5 million poundswon by the University of whatever.
Yeah.
And I think the, yeah,the money is so important.
Obviously it allows you to do thosethings, but really the story is what's
the impact and who's the lives andwhat's the breakthrough gonna be?
Because I think that'swhat the public care about.
They don't know if 5 million poundsis a lot of money it in, in a
(13:54):
lot of cases obviously it isn't.
Yeah.
But what they want toknow is, will my mom.
Beat this illness.
Sarah McLusky (14:02):
Yeah.
Andy Tattersall (14:02):
Will my dad get well?
Yeah.
Will I, you know, and I thinkthat's quite, that's the, quite
the important thing, the money.
I don't think newspapers areinterested in the money usually.
Yeah.
They're interested inthe, the actual impact.
So, but I also think that fora large extent, and this is.
This is across the board.
Whether you're working as an individualtrying to do things or working as a
(14:23):
group who may have an administrator.
I think it's all about little1% increments, trying to make
everything a little bit better.
How can we make ourcomms a bit more visible?
How can we make this bit of work a bitmore impactful, how can we actually
manage to reach this cohort of society?
How can we manage toreach this policy maker?
And they're all little 1% that you, youhave to think about all the time because
(14:46):
you know, you think about and um go intosomething in, in, in Sheffield I forgot
the gentleman's name now, but he, he'sa kind of a sports psych psychologist
who worked with I don't wanna say hisname 'cause I'll get it wrong, but,
uh, um, he worked with British cycling.
And the reason British cycling was sucha huge success throughout the noughties
was that he took this this idea.
(15:09):
His, his business iscalled Chimp Management.
Uh, I wanna say Steven Peters, I couldbe wrong, Steve Peters, but he went
and they looked at 1% increments.
And those increments could be washingyour hands after you've been to the loo
to reduce infection, because if cyclistscatch a cold, they can't practice.
Yeah.
These little things like that.
Yeah.
(15:29):
Doing something to this pieceof the technology to improve it.
Sarah McLusky (15:32):
Yeah.
Andy Tattersall (15:33):
Um, habits, habit forming.
So I think that that's quite important.
Sarah McLusky (15:37):
Yeah.
And it all adds up over time, doesn't it?
Absolutely.
These, absolutely these littleimprovements here and there, you know, it
doesn't always need to be about the bigsplash, about the big development, like
you say, the things that get reportedthese big grant wins and things like that.
And actually at the end of the day, itdoesn't always make much difference.
So one thing I think people willbe really curious to know is how
you got into doing this work.
(15:58):
You mentioned.
Having been, you know, doing learningtechnology and things like that.
But yeah, tell us about your journey.
Andy Tattersall (16:05):
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 asa baby, so life didn't start
great and I flunked to school.
Had a good time throughout my teens and mytwenties, and then decided needed to get
(16:28):
an education and I went off to college.
Cut.
Long story short, went anddid some A levels age 26.
Felt massively outta my depth.
Then managed to get a place at Sheffieldon their journalism degree, which
was at the time I think they had 1400applicants, and I was very lucky to get
on as a mature student and felt outta mydepth, but it was an amazing experience.
(16:50):
And then went off to be a journalistfor a short while, sports journalist
for the Press Association.
And did journalism as well, doingjournalism in the background.
And I've continued to do that incapacity doing music and culture.
But I, saw a job at theUniversity of Sheffield.
I went there doing theirinter library loans.
Sarah McLusky (17:08):
Okay.
Andy Tattersall (17:10):
And it was a very overwhelming job.
It was a, it was a paper-based joband after about a year I went off to
a, an event and came back and said, Ithink we need to digitize the system.
This was in my academic department andwe 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.
(17:32):
And I did that for a few yearsand started doing other things
that were not part of my job.
So I redesigned thelibrary 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 esteemedacademic in the evidence-based
synthesis world and evidence-basedlibrarianship he's led in that
(17:56):
and innovated from the start.
He's, he is, he is the kind of thegodfather of, of, of a lot of stuff.
Uh, Andrew Booth decided therewas a job for me and he managed
to get funding with anotherprofessor 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 thingsaround, you know, I started doing blogs.
(18:20):
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.
Sarah McLusky (18:35):
Yeah.
Andy Tattersall (18:35):
Um, which has been a huge.
I'm huge privilege.
Sarah McLusky (18:38):
Yeah.
Andy Tattersall (18:39):
And I've been trusted.
It comes with an awful lot of downfallsand responsibilities and, and concerns.
It's not, it's not all, uh, it's not allwonderful, but it's it has been, I've
been blessed that I've been supportedin that area to go off and do that.
So what I would've said is, is thatprobably around 2007, 2008, I probably
was a proto learning technologist.
(19:01):
I was very interested in the learningside 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, oursort of section at the time, professor
Simon Dixon, who recently retired.
He's a health economist and he said, youneed to figure out what you want to do.
(19:24):
Do you wanna go and do research ordo you want to go and do teaching?
'cause I was sort ofstraddling both to some extent.
And I went away and thought.
The learning technologists are startingto really take off in the institution.
There were people there who'd beendoing that for years before me uh, who'd
been doing that in various capacities.
And the whole movement wascertainly really, really
(19:45):
getting going on institutions.
And I thought, actually there'snothing happening in terms of research.
And I'm, and I'm talking aboutbeing a, a research technician.
I'm not talking, I'm not talkingabout research communications.
It was purely about thedigital side of things.
The digital literacy, that'severything from, Google apps and
I was, I was very much the kind ofthe lead for Google at Sheffield.
It, it implement, notimplementing it, but certainly.
(20:08):
Being the person for it to go out andspeak to departments and show them.
Because prior to us getting Googlein around 2010, I was already
using Google in the institution.
And again, this is before we'rethinking about information governance.
You know, I was using the Googleemail to get set up accounts.
Yeah, I'd got Blogger running,I'd got YouTube running, uh, I was
(20:29):
using SketchUp and stuff like that.
So I decided that I'd go downthe research route, and that was
where it, it was for me and that'sreally where I've been ever since.
Underpinned by informationand technology literacy.
So, uh, people do invite me to give talksabout technology and adoption and that's
something I've learned a lot about.
(20:50):
How do you get people to buy in stuffand what are the issues about that?
Sarah McLusky (20:55):
Yeah, that's making me think of the work you've done recently
about the move of organisations awayfrom Twitter and towards other platforms
and like you say, it's that period ofadoption and what makes people move and
when do they move and that sort of thing.
Yeah, really interesting.
Andy Tattersall (21:13):
Yeah, and what I've sort of learned is that universities are herds.
They kind of follow each other eventually.
And they sit and watchwhat others are doing.
And there's not really truly that manythat are truly freethinking or radical.
You know, you'll get a universitythat'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.
(21:37):
But I think they do follow,quite often in herds.
I think they're veryslow to move as a whole.
I predicted that with Twitter whenElon Musk took over, I said, well,
people are gonna jump 'cause you canmake 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 healthdecision or personal decision.
(21:59):
But as an organisations,it's really tricky.
And I, and I, and it's proven to be sowith Twitter that they're they may be
investing elsewhere, but the majorityare still not jumping off that one yet.
. Um, and, uh, I don't think thingswill change on Twitter, so it will be
interesting to see how that one plays out.
Sarah McLusky (22:16):
And then, and then you mentioned also looking at how things
like AI might be starting to come into organisations, what difference that
makes in places like universities.
What have you found there?
Andy Tattersall (22:28):
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, isif 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 anawful lot of researchers out there
(22:48):
who are leveraging it really well now.
I think they're probably gotsome really good workflows
and they're being very savvy.
Whether they're telling other peopleabout it will vary from person to person.
Uh, but I think we're probablyseeing for all of those, we're seeing
a, a probably two or three morethat are doing it very badly and
potentially also in a corrupt way.
(23:09):
So I, the issue I've got with AIis, uh, certainly from the platforms
I've looked at, is it's beingshoehorned into a lot of stuff.
And I think it's detracting away fromthe quality of the said platform.
And I think that people not necessarilyare in a position to make a good value
judgment as to whether that works well.
(23:31):
Uh, so what would be goodwould be more conversations.
It's something I wanna think moreabout, maybe even develop a course
on, in terms of dissemination.
Uh, I, I know initial, conversationsand I get this, you know, you,
you speak to perhaps people, mediapeople, people who might work in press
very cautious and nervous about it.
Because they're worried aboutit, undermining their roles.
(23:51):
And I, I get that.
I get that why people in the arts andhumanities are particularly wary of AI.
But I do think that it isan opportunity in this area.
I think it's an opportunityfor accessibility.
I think it's an opportunityto develop some very inventive
and creative ways of working.
You know, a good example would be youlook at image creation just a year ago
(24:13):
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 withwonky hands and skewed faces.
Whereas now if you do something,you can get something that's quite.
Decent with a relativelystraightforward prompt.
(24:34):
That's my experience of late.
That's good.
But again, I think it goes back to theissue of inequalities because with all
of these AI tools, they've got to makemoney 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 remember2004 to around 2007 was a huge expansion
(24:58):
of web tools that came out that justdid everything and it was amazing.
And then you realize actuallya lot of them aren't that good.
They don't improve your life anda lot of 'em don't work well.
And then some of the ones that did workwell are, have been created by a PhD
student who realizes that he or sheneeds to get a an income and that's
not paying them and it disappears.
And I think we'll see this with AI.
(25:19):
I think we'll see platforms rise fall,we'll see people who can't leverage
it, make money and we'll also seean 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 takingvery different approaches and some are
(25:39):
trying to lock down as much as they can.
They see it as aninformation governance issue.
They see it as a literacy issue.
And perhaps some of the studentsmight even be better equipped than
some of the staff in using thesetools and finding ways to do that.
And some of 'em might be running with it.
And doing some really interestingstuff and some having some
really interesting conversations.
I know at Sheffield there's some reallygood people that are behind this, that
(26:01):
are doing, doing some very interestingthings, sharing things that I don't
understand, you know, around data andcode and how to carry out research.
And they're doing, they're doingsome really, really good stuff.
But for the majority of academics, theyprobably 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
Sarah McLusky (26:21):
I would say that's exactly
Andy Tattersall (26:22):
how I feel so,
And it just takes one personto use it in a really fantastic
way, and everyone goes, wow.
Yeah.
And that's always been thecase with technology, isn't it?
You know?
Yeah.
Someone goes off,
Sarah McLusky (26:34):
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 theyinvented text messaging and they
didn't think anybody would want it.
Yeah.
And then they, and then itjust, and everybody went, oh,
actually this is really good.
Yeah.
So,
Andy Tattersall (26:49):
yeah.
Sarah McLusky (26:50):
We shall see.
We shall see.
Yeah.
Um, but one technology that you havereally embraced is podcasting, isn't it?
That's, and that's howour paths crossed, um Yes.
In the first place.
What is it that you find so interestingor enjoyable about podcasting?
Andy Tattersall (27:07):
So again, going back many years, the journey starts when
I was probably about 12, 11 listeningto Radio Luxembourg under the covers
as a little boy and fascinated byradio, and then becoming an avid
record collector at the age of 11.
Making my own radioshows called Tatt on Two.
Sarah McLusky (27:26):
Excellent.
Are there recordings of this anywhere?
Andy Tattersall (27:28):
There isn't.
They were on cassettes and they were givento friends along with Tatt on Two pens.
Which were pens with the word Tatt onTwo liquid papered onto them, and so I
would've been about 13, 14 at the time.
I'd record a record and thenrecord a microphone and me
talking in between and, yeah.
Pause tape, do the do stuff.
(27:49):
And then I got into DJingin the sort of mid eighties.
I be, I became a hip hop dj and so I canscratch 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, becamea pirate radio DJ for six years.
And, and was on a few stations, a coupleof very infamous ones in, in Sheffield,
(28:11):
very well known Fantasy FM and SCR, whichwhen I've been featured in interviews, you
get colleagues in meetings and they'll saywere 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 Iwent to do journalism, which
included broadcast journalism.
And I then went sort of, uh,probably, the mid two thousands, I
(28:37):
was approached by a radio stationonline, a hip hop radio station
who was an international one known.
And I was persuaded to kind of startdoing a show, which I did for a few years.
And then I moved on to anotherstation and I did that.
And the weird thing is I took quite awhile to bring it into a professional
setting . So I didn't do my first podcastuntil, I think my first ones around 2018,
(29:00):
2019, and they're one person podcast.
It's me talking about athing scripted, right?
Yeah.
So it's talking about, so I did those andI, I didn't, I didn't, we didn't have the
facilities, I don't think, at Sheffield atthe time to really do anything properly.
So I did that, but I found a reportI wrote in around 2007 around
customer relationship managementand how we approached students and
(29:22):
what other universities were doing.
And I was asked to dig thereport out a few years ago,
about four or five years ago.
And I looked through the conclusions andone of the key conclusions in 2007 was.
We should be doing podcasts.
Sarah McLusky (29:35):
Goodness me, that you even knew what, I don't think
I'd even heard of podcasts in 2007.
Andy Tattersall (29:40):
And so I was, it suggest there's very few
recommendations and that was one of them.
And it, this, thisdocument is around 2007.
It may even be slightly early, about 2006.
But it took me about 12years to actually do it.
Sarah McLusky (29:53):
Yeah.
Andy Tattersall (29:53):
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 DesertIsland Discs and The Life Scientific.
And we've had Jim Al-Khalili from TheLife Scientific as a guest, and that was
with, um, Tony Ryan, who's a chemist,OBE, and um, Marie Kinsey, who's an
(30:16):
emeritus professor of journalism.
And it's a journey aboutmusic 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 Istep 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 'emanother producer, but I think they, they
don't want to continue with me going.
(30:36):
So, I think they're very sadabout me going if I'm honest.
So, and I produced one of my own calledCommunicable Research, which is about
health, communicating health research.
And I also produce onecalled The Overnight Podcast.
So that, so that's really my journey.
I, after Sheffield, I havean idea for a podcast series,
which I think will be good.
(30:58):
If I can get the guests.
I think it'll bring something.
Extra to, you know, I think, youknow, your podcast brings something
different, and includes, you know, awealth of really, really good guests.
And, uh, and hopefully I can kind ofcontribute to that pool of podcasts.
'cause I know you areadvocate I love podcasts.
Yeah.
Ultimately.
If you were to say to me, if you're ona desert island, what would you prefer?
(31:20):
Having a radio or TV,radio wins hands down.
Sarah McLusky (31:23):
Oh, me as well.
Radio.
Anytime.
Andy Tattersall (31:25):
I still think it's very early days for podcasts because
I think that, um, what I like aboutpodcasts and I'm sure you, you
know, you've found this experience.
It's a, it gives a safespace for people to talk.
It's not like working with the media.
It's, yeah.
It's, it is an opportunityand a safe space.
And this is.
I think it's quite an importantpoint as, and I'm waffling on, but
(31:47):
where universities really miss out onpodcasting, and I think this is huge,
and it's the same with video, is thatfor prospective students, it gives them a
insight into the people who may teach themif they go to that institution because all
they might see is a bit of text with nophotograph on a staff profile or what they
might see is a photograph with some text.
(32:09):
Now I don't know if he or she's any good.
Sarah McLusky (32:11):
Yeah,
Andy Tattersall (32:11):
but if I hear them talking and I think these
know their stuff, and that's thekind of person I wanna sit down
in the lecture room and hear.
Sarah McLusky (32:18):
Yeah,
Andy Tattersall (32:19):
it's a massive opportunity.
Sarah McLusky (32:20):
It is.
And it, and you could, the littlesnippets, you know, just five
minutes here and there couldmake a huge difference, isn't it?
It doesn't have to be a huge, itdoesn't have to be a huge commitment.
So yeah, also a big fan of audio.
Um.
Well, I think we should keep aneye on the time, but I do like to
ask all of my guests if they had amagic wand, what they would change
about the world that they work in.
(32:40):
So what would you like touse your magic wand for?
Andy Tattersall (32:45):
That is a really, really tough question.
'cause there is absolutelyso much wrong in
higher education, sadly, aswe know, perennial problems.
If I had a magic wand, I think, ifI was like king for a day, I would
(33:05):
absolutely, we would be in this positionwhere everybody, absolutely, everybody
has guaranteed time to carry out CPD.
And I am lucky that I've been able to doa job where largely my job is continual
CPD, so I'm continually developing andlearning, and I got the bug for learning
(33:28):
late in the day when I went to collegeand not and, uh, it's not left me since.
And I think that there's an awful lot ofpeople, and I think particularly, and I
know a lot of people, you know, peopleyou speak to work in professional services
but a lot of their colleagues will notgive themselves time for CPD or will not
have the time given to them, and they'llhave line managers who don't support them.
(33:49):
And I think an organisation in highereducation 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 fordealing with difficult conversations and
things like that, which are useful orresilience, which we're seeing often.
But it's about the things thatmake you better at your job.
(34:13):
And actually you care about yourjob more, because I think if you are
better and then you care about thework, you take more interest in it and
you try and develop it and change it.
And I think the really valuableprofessional services people
are the ones who try and changetheir 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.
(34:34):
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 andby given, giving the opportunity
to train and to learn and to begiven the protected time to do that.
Yeah.
I think the organisation for every hourof that, you get many more hours back
(34:55):
in cost savings and I think that thatwould'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 dosomething that's gonna be beneficial
for you and your colleagues.
And I think sadly, that will onlyprobably get worse as the current climate.
(35:15):
But that's the thing I'd fix.
Sarah McLusky (35:17):
Yeah, I think that's a fantastic suggestion and yeah, definitely
this access to professional developmenthas come up many times in this podcast
with many different guests and also otherconversations I've had and it does seem
to be some seem to be a real problemand it's holding, holding people back.
And, uh, it need not be, as you say, theseare meant to be educational organisations.
(35:39):
So, why don't they prioritisethe education of their own staff?
But yes.
Andy Tattersall (35:44):
Yeah.
Sarah McLusky (35:44):
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 withyou, find out about your work, where
would you suggest that they go?
Where do you hang out most online.
Andy Tattersall (35:57):
I'm on BlueSky.
I mean, the jury's still out as towhether 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, thatneeds 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, soyou'll find that on BlueSky.
(36:17):
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 largelygot him knocked off the page rankings,
like a good information professional.
Sarah McLusky (36:30):
Fantastic.
Oh well, I'll get those links,put them in the show notes.
But for now, thank you so much forcoming along and sharing your story.
Andy Tattersall (36:38):
Thank you.
It's been a pleasure.
Sarah McLusky (36:40):
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 descriptionto find full show notes and to follow
the podcast on LinkedIn or Instagram.
You can also find all the links and otherepisodes at www.researchadjacent.com.
Research Adjacent is presentedand produced by Sarah McLusky,
(37:00):
and the theme music is byLemon Music Studios on Pixabay.
And you, yes you, get a big goldstar for listening right to the end.
See you next time.
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