Michaela Agapiou was based in New York City for her internship with The Story Collider as part of her PhD programme , having approached them after spending many, many hours listening to podcasts while dissecting fruit fly testes. This is her first job outside of a lab, as she fell in love with science and research at a young age. She undertook her internship during 2019, whilst she was in her third year.
In Michaela’s own words…
I carried out my PIPS with The Story Collider, a non-profit organisation that produces true, personal stories about science. They have 60-70 live shows a year across the USA, Canada, New Zealand and the UK, as well as a weekly podcast that has been downloaded more than 9 million times.
After having spent many hours in the lab listening to, and being incredibly moved by, these stories, I approached The Story Collider after a live show I attended, to ask whether they would take me on as an intern. Fortunately, they said ‘Yes’ and a year later I moved to New York City for three months. Without the funding from BBSRC for this internship – through the White Rose BBSRC Doctoral Training Partnership, The Story Collider would not have been able to host me, as they are a small organisation with only three full-time staff.
From March-June 2019, I worked mostly with Erin Barker (Artistic Director) and Nisse Greenberg (Deputy Director). My main project was to review and categorise their back catalogue, which spans many years, and to help create new pages on their website to make these stories more discoverable and shareable based on their themes. I used new software and websites to complete this project and developed my organisational skills. I also kept up to date with the current stories being produced to help contribute to the podcast planning discussions.
I also developed and performed a story of my own for one of the shows. This was an incredible experience where I learnt about communicating science to a broader audience than I have in the past and in a very different style. It was great for my personal growth too, as my confidence in public speaking has improved. Through working on my own story with one of The Story Collider ’s senior producers, and in helping the production of other shows, I learnt about the process of developing a story from an initial written draft to it being told on stage. I got to see this process with six of The Story Collider’s producers and learn about their different styles of working with storytellers.
Through my main project and the live shows I attended (not just The Story Collider ’s but many other storytelling shows accessible to me whilST living in New York) I was really immersed in the storytelling world and further exposed to the art of it and how powerful personal narratives can be. I feel really passionate about the mission of The Story Collider to humanise science, and show that science belongs to us all and is part of everyone’s lives through these personal stories. It was an honour to work with them, learn from them and contribute to this mission for three months and I hope to work with them again in the future.