EPISTEM PODCAST

In this episode of the EPI·STEM podcast, Geraldine SimmiePhD and Michelle Starr PhD welcome Dr Michaela Hayes as their special guest. Dr Hayes is a University Teacher in technology education in the School of Education and an EPI∙STEM Affiliate with expertise in teaching student teachers’ subjects, such as, construction studies, graphics and wood technology.
In the EPI·STEM podcast today, Dr Michaela Hayes shares her passion for teaching and research in technology education andpedagogy and explains how deliberative democracy in the classroom can support paying attention to the common good of society and the environment. Dr Hayes traces her passion and research interest in technology education from good beginnings as a pupil in Coláiste Mhuire in Ennis to her four-year undergraduate degree in UL in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in technology education. Dr Hayes’s research expertise in relation to pedagogy and teacher learning in technology education is underpinned by her doctoral study - completed in 2025.
Dr Hayes’ doctoral study involved a deep dive into a conceptual framework that drew from the theorisations of Habermas and Foucault and examined the problem involved in seeking to establish a democratic classroom experience for all young people. Dr Hayes explains the need to acknowledge the rich interplays between technology, ethics and power. This needs to include the heart work embedded in good teaching and the necessary struggle for students to experience a democratic learning environment in technology education. Michaela explains that the overall aim here is to make a difference to breathing life into the United Nation’s sustainable development goals.
Dr Michaela Hayes is currently working on a European projecton active learning methodologies with her colleagues, Dr Niekie Blom and Dr Donal Canty. This coming week they are travelling, along with final year students to Murcia in Spain to meet their European partners and to visit schools.
The music selection today is performed by Caoimhe Doherty, athird-year student in the BA in World Music in The Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at UL. Here Caoimhe plays two jigs on the fiddle, The Rolling Wave and Banished Misfortune.

In this episode of the EPI·STEM podcast, Geraldine SimmiePhD and Michelle Starr PhD welcome Professor JJ Leahy as their special guest. Professor JJ Leahy is Head of the Department of Chemical Sciences in the University of Limerick, a world-renowned expert on environmental chemistry who is working on large scale research projects and in an advisory role in relation to European directives.
In the EPI·STEM podcast today, Professor JJ Leahy shares the changing face of the scientific research and higher education taking place in the Department of Chemical Sciences today, especially with the new emphasis on finding innovative and sustainable solutions to issues of waste management, climate change, biomedical issues and renewable energies. This has resulted in former disciplinary teams in higher education nowadays working more across multiple disciplines, in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary spaces sharing these ethical and epistemic puzzles, including chemical engineering, industrial biochemistry, pharmaceutical chemistry and environmental sciences.
Professor JJ Leahy shares his passion for scientific research and innovation and what it can do when coupled with the foundational and ethical principles of education and good governance to inspire mindset change and lifelong learning among a scientifically informed general population, with an increasing critical awareness of the necessity for a care-based, sustainable and cooperative future.
The music selection today is performed by Caoimhe Doherty, a third-year student in the BA in World Music in The Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at UL. Here Caoimhe plays a jig written by Junior Crehan called Misty Covered Mountain.

In this episode of the EPI·STEM podcast, Geraldine SimmiePhD and Michelle Starr PhD welcome Associate Professor Keelin Leahy as their special guest. Associate Professor Leahy is a Lecturer in Wood, Technology & Design in the School of Education and an EPI∙STEM Affiliate.
In the podcast Associate Professor Leahy recalls how herresearch interest and passion for the subject happened through inspiration from a female teacher of woodwork in her school days in Coláiste Mhuire in Ennis, Co. Clare and through working in the medium of wood with her father. Keelincompleted her undergraduate studies in UL in Construction Studies. Later Associate Professor Keelin Leahy spent a sabbatical year in the University of Michigan in the US. There Keelin worked with a multidisciplinary team in ‘designheuristics’ including researchers interested in psychology and in design. While Design Thinking, both in the US and Ireland was focused more on the output there was less interest shown in the process, and especially in the ways thatyoung people could be inspired to think as creative designers. Today, Keelin has written textbooks for student teachers, for teaching design thinking in the post-primary curriculum in Ireland.
Associate Professor Keelin Leahy goes on to explain the thinking tools, steps and skillsets that can nowadays be provided to young people when engaging in ‘domain readiness’ for problem-based learning. These includecognitive and metacognitive thinking tools and strategies that help students to push past ‘fixation’ and that can open minds and hearts to innovative approaches. This ‘heuristic design’ approach not only enriches competence in design thinking skills, it helps student wellbeing and has capacity for all involved to seek ways to make a difference to people, place and planet. 
Finally, Associate Professor Leahy speaks to a recentresearch paper published with colleagues in UL who formed an online community of practice during covid-19. The platform supported the colleagues to reflexively engage in relation to their efforts to teach young people online and to learn with and from one another. Keelin speaks to the power of dialogue, the felt sense of collegiality, and the deeper, more meaningful and contextually significant learning arising from this encounter.
We will now draw the podcast to a close from this semesterand plan to return when our spring semester starts again in January 2026. We are delighted to announce that the Irish Research Council have awarded us in EPI·STEM with a research fellow for Dr Vo Van De to work in a school-university-enterprise partnership with Eli Lilly and chemistry teachers in schools in Ireland. A special word of thanks to all our guests this semester and to Assistant Professor Matthew Noone for his support from the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance. Finally, thanks to the Digital Hub in UL for hosting our podcast and to our producer, Grzegorz Rogola for his expertise, skill and constant care.
The music selection today is by Nora Gowran from Ennis inCounty Clare. Nora is a first-year student in the BA in World Music in The Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at UL. Here Nora sings a beautiful sean-nós song, Grá Mo Chroí (Love of My Heart).

In this episode of the EPI·STEM podcast, Geraldine SimmiePhD welcomes Professor Merrilyn Goos as the special guest along with Associate Professor Niamh O’Meara. Professor Goos is currently Professor Emeritus in the Sunshine Coast University in Australia. Merrilyn was a former Director of EPI·STEM The National Centre for STEM Education, where she is now an Adjunct Professor.
In this episode, Professor Goos, who grew up in Brisbane inthe mid-eastern coast of Australia shares how her passion and research revolves around supporting teachers in their practices. In a former role, Merrilyn acted as the Course Director of the Professional Diploma in Mathematics forTeaching (PDMT) and published extensively on teacher upskilling programmes. Merrilyn understands that programmes do not seamlessly transport to a differentcountry and that higher level things matter in this regard, such as, the culture of schools and the relationships between a variety of actors.
In this episode, Professor Goos shows how critical mathematical thinking has gained in significance in Australia and how this makes sense given that many complex problems encountered today require agility to move between disciplines and to generate new creative and critical solutions. For mathematics teaching this can mean connecting subject matter to real life issues of social justice, such as housing, flood protections, homelessness. Many of these ethical and contemporary issues require skills and competence in mathematics as a vital component of real-world solutions.
Professor Merrilyn Goos also completed extensive research,and support of teachers, in relation to numeracy across the curriculum. This involved completing an audit of numeracy across the curriculum while helping teachers to see where numeracy matters in specific subject areas. These border-crossing partnership, including collaborations of mathematics educators and mathematicians, while having a sound theoretical basis can prove challenging in the living contradictions of practice.
Merrilyn has recently written timely reviews of STEMeducation - while noting that STEM is included in the Primary Curriculum in Ireland, initial reviews reveal that teachers generally see themselves as subject experts. In addition, there is often no allocated space in the school timetable for STEM in post-primary schools and this thinking has yet to gainthat desired policy momentum. 
After serving eight years on the executive of the InternationalConference for Mathematics Instruction (ICMI), Merrilyn is currently President of this prestigious organisation. ICMI works across the global world and especially in developing countries, where teachers of mathematics are often teaching young people without adequate upskilling and more often without resources.
​​The music selection today is by Sarbik Guha, a singersongwriter known by his stage name as Biki, and as Biki and his Buddies. Biki is a 3rd year PhD student in Arts Practice in the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at UL. Here Biki sings his first original composition ‘Its High Time You Make Her Believe’, while playing his acoustic guitar.

In this episode of the EPI·STEM podcast, Geraldine SimmiePhD welcomes Associate Professor Nicolaas Blom as the special guest. Nicolaas is a Lecturer in Technology Education and Course Director of the International Master’s programme in the School of Education at UL.
Here Associate Professor Blom shares how he came to UL in2020 from his former role as a Lecturer in Design Technology in South Africa. Nicolaas was attracted to the education system in Ireland through an education technology conference he attended in 2018, where he was highly impressed by the creativity and modelling in the projects on display.
Associate Professor Blom’s research specialism lies in interrogation of where young people’s creative ideas and thinking come from, such as, from the layout of the problem, the role of memory and prior experience, and/or the part played by stimulating learning environments. This was the topic of interest in Nicolaas’s PhD study in Technology Design 2016 and continues to interest him nowadays in relation to the cognitive, metacognitive, including learning from indigenous communities. In this regard, Associate Professor Blom isinterested not only in the complexity of students’ thinking, designing and doing but also in navigating their personal ethical journeys of (human) becoming. Nicolaas invites his students to partake in action research projects while working in teams and navigating what the Celtic philosopher, JohnO’Donohue called ‘the web of betweenness’.
As part of public engagement, and aligned with AssociateProfessor Blom’s interest in the notion of social sustainability, Nicolaas works in a cross-national partnership project between transition year students in one school in Ireland (Kanturk, Co. Cork) and a rural resource centre in South Africa, with the aim of designing and manufacturing low cost resources for students with severe disabilities, and for instilling a felt sense of social consciousness, for responsibility and action with and for others. 
The music selection is by Sarbik Guha, known by his stage name as Biki, and as Biki and his Buddies. Biki is a 3rd year PhDstudent in Arts Practice in the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at UL. Biki sings an original composition ‘Fly Away to Another Shore’, while playing his acoustic guitar.