Alumna launches a new podcast about bridging social divides

Angelika Love (2011, Experimental Psychology) has launched Angelika Love's Conversations, a podcast which features conversations with social integration practitioners – activists, entrepreneurs, and academics who are working to create more equitable, integrated, and peaceful communities. Through the conversations, Angelika and her guests explore the origins of and ideas behind their work. 

Angelika believes that social integration and bridge-building initiatives should not fall off the radar during a period of social isolation. This is a time when many of us are craving more and better conversations, and she hopes that this podcast can inject hope, entertain, and inform. What's more, the conversations draw attention to innovative ways in which people around the world are trying to make societies places where more people can flourish.

The first series features people like Matt Pierri who created the SociAbility app and is changing how we think about the accessibility of public spaces; or Aneel Brar, whose health clinic offers pre and post-natal care for women in rural India; or Paula Raubenheimer who, as the lead gardener in one of the last Old Cape gardens in Stellenbosch (South Africa), created an unlikely community in a starkly divided town. 

Their conversations cover cochlear implants and periods, interior design and digging a well. Some stay close to home, whilst others head to the other end of the world. In each conversation, Angelika and her guest discuss the origins of and ideas behind their work and, along the way, discover means – some large, some small – of creating more diverse, smarter, healthy, successful communities.

Angelika has been passionate about audio broadcasting throughout her life, and shared this summary of her interest with us.

I have been fascinated by radio for as long as I can remember. When I was twelve, my parents took me to the open day of our local radio station where – with the serious concentration and unwavering focus that only nerdy twelve-year-olds can muster – I was allowed to read the traffic announcement. My mother still talks about how everyone in the room fell silent when I started speaking. I remember logging that day as “the best day ever”. 

Fifteen years have passed, and you are still more likely to find me by the radio than watching television. BBC Radio 4 kept me company when l felt lonely in my long-distance relationship. It eased the transition of my internal monologue from German and Norwegian into English as I slowly began to find my undergraduate feet in Oxford. Yet, while I kept honing my own conversation skills as a peer supporter at St John’s, workshop leader, and public speaker, I never became part of the student radio crowd. Maybe in my early twenties I was so focussed on essays and grades that spending time away from work was unthinkable. Probably in those days my own perfectionism made me nervous about the scrutiny of anyone but a trusted few.

Then podcasts captured the audio scene, as did tablet-sized recording apps and powerful but affordable microphones that fit snugly into my palm. As a social psychologist approaching the completion of my DPhil, I had by then not only practiced the art of asking unapologetically nosy questions with many a friend or colleague, but I had also deepened my expertise on a subject area that captures public interest: prejudice reduction, diversity, and social integration. So I felt emboldened and – finally – made my own little radio programme, Angelika Love’s Conversations.

In Season One, Angelika talks to seven guests about the practicalities of designing more accessible spaces, bringing communities together in joint ventures, or facilitating secondary education for girls and women around the world, to name just a few topics. You can listen to the podcast on most common podcasting platforms, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts, or you can head to www.angelikalove.com/podcast to listen and find out more about her guests.