The STS NewsRoom is the department’s largest summer studentship programme. We organise the NewsRoom to function as close to a real-world magazine setting as possible.
Our student journalists create their own stories, delivering articles of quite different types. Written pieces are submitted for Alchemy, STS’s annual magazine that reaches more over 1,000 readers, especially teachers. They interview, investigate, discover, write, and re-write. They are challenged to edit articles to fit for length, focus, and audience. They are challenged to locate images and supporting materials, too. You’ll see the results in our next issue of Alchemy.
STS NewsRoom students also create content for WeAreSTS, our podcast to showcase research and the ideas we think are critical. Students create one episode on a topic of their own choosing, together with supporting material. Their work involves every element of podcast production, from storyboarding to final edits and sound effects. These are released as BONUS episodes in the WeAreSTS series.
Was it worth it?
Here’s what one of our student journalists said about the STSNewsRoom experience:
“Working with the STS Newsroom was one of the biggest highlights of the past year for me, and I really feel like I’m walking away from this internship with more skills and greater confidence. I was nervous about recording a podcast as I’d never done something like this and am not the most confident speaker, but I can honestly say that I really enjoyed the process and am looking forward to (hopefully) working on similar projects in the future. It was great to be part of such a fantastic team.”
Get involved
Calls for applications to work in the STS NewsRoom normally circulate after Reading Week of Term 2. These studentships are open to UCL students (undergraduate and post-graduate alike) with some element of STS in their training, such as one module taught by the department.
If you want to find out more, contact either Dr Jean-Baptiste Gouyon or Professor Joe Cain.
Chances are you’ve had something to do with “mindfulness” recently. Maybe you’ve been sent to “mindfulness” training. Or, perhaps you’ve been listening to a mindfulness podcast. Or, perhaps you’re using a “mindfulness” app, such as More…
Alex Hancock explores how research about museum collections is helping to connect British museums with more of the publics they claim to support. His emphasis is on decolonisation, engagement, and white European power. Ultimately, how More…
We sampled undergraduate projects in a previous episode. Now, it time for the Master’s students. Today’s episode offers a sampler of student-made podcasts. These were created by Master’s students in our science journalism module, run More…
It’s one of those fundamental tenets taught to every student: science is international; it’s the same everywhere, it respects no borders; the work is the same no matter where or when you are. Assessing this More…
Is AI sentient? Do machines have souls? I’ve got an even better question: are these questions the most important ones we should be asking? Headlines claiming machines could be alive are definitely eye-catching. But hype More…
Did you know that in March 1967, the British government bombed an oil tanker stranded on rocks off Cornwall? Dan Sharpe certainly didn’t when he began to dig into the life and career of the More…
Scientific knowledge has evolved over the past few centuries in various political and socio-cultural contexts. There is seen to be a substantially disproportionate legacy of European thought in scientific education. How the fingerprints of colonialism More…
Most of us have heard of peer review, but how does it actually work? After more than a century, is it still fit for purpose? This episode explores the state of peer review in academic More…
As someone who prides herself on being interested in women’s health and progress related to it, Sofia Sancho still had no idea what “menstrual leave” was when it suddenly was all over the news earlier More…
Jasmine Chakravarty reports for STS NewsRoom. As of November 2021, more than 46.4 million people in the UK have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine as part of the biggest mass-immunization programme the More…
Copyright 2023 Professor Joe Cain
