Over its first four seasons, Research Recast(ed) has featured 79 MacEwan faculty members and 25 students sharing their expertise on subjects of all kinds. This month, the podcast, produced by the Office of Research Services and the Faculty of Fine Arts and Communications, is celebrating the release of its 100th episode.

MacEwan’s Tactical Plan for Scholarship emphasizes meaningful engagement with community partners, ensuring that our scholarship can be effectively utilized. To that end, Dr. Craig Kuziemsky, associate vice-president, Research, sought to develop a novel approach for knowledge translation.  From that vision, Research Recast(ed) was born. The knowledge mobilization podcast aims to share research happening across faculties and schools with a larger audience, both on and off campus. 

For the first two seasons, Raymond Baril acted as executive producer, working with the host and production team, and also choosing the interviewees and subject content. For many of those interviewees, he notes, Research Recast(ed) was an opportunity to speak about their research in a formal, recorded setting. The podcast not only provided a platform for researchers to disseminate their work, but could also be used as a mode of knowledge mobilization in applications for grants and funding. 

“Think of what it's doing for the university, and how it's bringing everybody together to disseminate information,” says Baril. “It's not the only way to promote knowledge, but it is a relevant way. And it's in-house, being done in a collaborative environment.”

That collaboration happens among faculty and students in the recording studio in Allard Hall. Kelsie Johnston is one of eight students who have worked on Research Recast(ed) over the years. She was brought in as a videographer when the podcast expanded to also include a vodcast, but soon shifted her position to host, a role she still performs.

“I love learning new things,” says the Bachelor of Communication Studies student. “Research is sometimes inaccessible – without an academic background, some of the concepts can be a struggle. I love being able to take that information and distill it down into something that everyone can understand. There are so many interesting things out there, and I like that we can remove some of the barriers to finding them.” 

Baril, since returning to the Department of Music as chair, is no longer part of the podcast production team, but still listens to every episode. He’s seen the increased attention the podcast has received and recognition that comes from the inter-department collaborations. Looking toward the next 100 episodes, he sees even more opportunities for inter-departmental collaboration, and suggests possibly recording the podcast on location, utilizing other spaces on campus as a way to create more awareness of the podcast.

For now, the Research Recast(ed) team seems to have found their footing – at the launch of season five, the podcast had aired 4,589 minutes of content that had been listened to 6,441 times, and the video versions had been seen 2,586 times. The numbers show the podcast’s success in increasing accessibility to scholarly activity at MacEwan.

Johnston adds, “I think the podcast has just gotten better and better, and that will continue as we learn more.”