Blog - ♫ “Radio – What new?” ♫

During my visit to Australia, I was invited to be interviewed by a local radio station in New South Wales, ABC Illawarra.The producers of the radio station saw the advertisement for my presentation on sexual expression in persons living with dementia and wanted to hear more about my research topic. This was such an unexpected invitation to receive. I was interviewed off air and it was broadcasted during the morning radio show. At first I thought that my work was not adequate enough to go on the radio – after all I am half way through my PhD with no robust findings yet! However, I realised that this was an opportunity to speak to many people, in a short amount of time about the importance of my research. To my astonishment, approximately 31,400 people were tuned in for my ten-minute talk.

 

I think a huge element of my research is about breaking social barriers and getting people talking about something that is usually swept under the carpet. I am unsure at this stage if anything major will emerge from participating in this interview. However, what I imagine this has done is got members of the public speaking about a topic that is considered taboo and sparked a lot of conversations. Talking about older persons, sex and sexual expression is certainly not your typical breakfast radio show topic, but I was delighted that the radio produces saw that this was a topic of immense value and wanted to open up discussions about this. I hope that by raising awareness on an idea or a research topic, perspectives be changing and underlying assumptions could be questioned.

 

Links to the interview:

Part 1 – http://my.tvey.es/p9T2C

Part 2 – http://my.tvey.es/p4EKa