Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric)Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones.About the episode:This third episode of the third series of LitSciPod features an interview with education researcher and recent DPhil graduate Dr Ashmita Randhawa (@Rand_Ash). Through a discussion of Ashmita’s thesis on studio schools, we consider educational policy, STEM and the language of aspiration, and the long history of STEM shortages. At the end of the episode, you can hear Ashmita read Sarah Key’s poem ‘Be’. You can watch Sarah Kay reading it here https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_kay_if_i_should_have_a_daughter?language=enMaterials discussed:

Catherine Charlwood, ‘“Context is all: Science, society and the novel’, English Review, Vol. 31, No. 4 (2021)

Ashmita Randhawa, STEM and the Studio: understanding the role of Studio Schools in technical education, DPhil thesis

James Robson, Ashmita Randhawa, and Ewart Keep, ‘Employability Skills in Studio Schools: Investigating the use of the CREATE Framework’. London: The Edge Foundation, 2018 http://www. edge. co. uk/sites/default/files/documents/create_final_report_december2018_1.pdf

Melissa Dickson, ‘Knocking Some Sense into Them: Overpressure Debates and the Education of Mind and Body’ in Anxious times: medicine and modernity in Nineteenth-Century Britain, eds. Amelia Bonea, Melissa Dickson, Sally Shuttleworth and Jennifer Wallis, Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century, University of Pittsburgh Press (2019), pp. 158-89