In the EPI•STEM PODCAST Episode 9, co-hosts Geraldine Simmie PhD and Michelle Starr PhD welcome their special guest Dr. Avril Mc Loughlin, a researcher and lecturer in the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at UL. Avril shares her research interest in community music and music education and the important interplay between theory, practice and culture.

We tease out some tensions and synergies between the Arts and Music and STEM subjects, and how that plays out in contested views of STEAM Education. While there are technical aspects to all disciplines we are also interested in the many aspects that are upstream of the instrumental.

The Arts, Aesthetics and Ethics are central to our rationale for the STEAM Education design project of a Futuristic Sustainable Eco-Village in Ireland in 2050. The seven schools are engaging with the project in this cross-curricular, holistic, and humanising way for a care-based, social and planetary justice view. Looking anew at how to make that transformative difference to our shared life world.

We are now signing off until the University of Limerick’s semester starts again in January 2025. We want to give a special word of thanks to Grzegorz Rogola, the senior multimedia designer in the UL digital Hub in the Kemmy Business School for all his expertise and support with the production.

Our musical selection today is from Sarbik Guha, known by all as Biki and his Buddies. Biki is a singer, songwriter and acoustic guitarist and a second year PhD student in Arts Practice in The Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, UL. Biki sings his own composition ‘Hey There Fellow Dreamer’.