Research communication fundingA Podcast on Art and MoralityJana Graul on her project “Zwischen Pinsel und Pranger (Between Brush and Pillory)”

16 January 2026

Photo: Jan Rost, nach einem Entwurf von Agnolo Bronzino, Detail aus: Justizia befreit die Unschuld, 1549, Tapisserie, Florenz, Palazzo Pitti, Museo degli Argenti; Graphik: Darius Wakilzadeh

As part of a two-semester teaching project at the University of Hamburg's Art History Seminar, master's students led by Dr. Jana Graul developed and produced an art history podcast with the aim of combining academic standards with the popular educational format in the spirit of knowledge transfer. The content focused on artistic freedom and its limits in the early modern period. The podcast consists of eight episodes, each introducing an artistic personality and an offense, and was published on the L.I.S.A. science portal operated by the Gerda Henkel Foundation.

How did you come up with the idea for this project?

The idea of producing a scientifically sound podcast that is also accessible to a non-specialist audience and conveys the content of my research questions and topics has appealed to me for a long time. I myself have always enjoyed listening to audio formats, basically for as long as I can remember, and I am convinced of their potential in the field of knowledge transfer. This works particularly well when complexity is allowed and sufficient time is given to develop an argument. Fortunately, podcasts have established themselves in recent years as a whole field for sophisticated science communication, contrary to the once common journalistic credo, which assumed ever shorter attention spans and the need for strong simplification. And the best thing about it, in my opinion, is that the format is particularly popular with young people! In this sense, it was a stroke of luck that the UHH offered me the opportunity to realize the podcast idea as a teaching project with students who are practically “at home” with the format. They approached the project with passion, creativity, and great commitment and contributed many of their own ideas: from radio play elements to the graphic design of the “packaging”, to a teaser.

What challenges did you encounter when creating the podcast episodes?

In short: a lot! Preparing and implementing a teaching project like this is extremely time-consuming, and it is easy to underestimate the effort required to develop and produce a high-quality educational podcast. For example, I was keen to teach the students the necessary skills. To this end, I received a great deal of support on request, both internally at the university in the writing center and media center of the departments of language, literature, media I+II, and externally through workshops and consulting by a science journalist.

The actual creation of a podcast for teaching purposes consists of various elements. The most important ones are: First, developing the academic content, in this case as part of a seminar. Second, converting the content of term papers into audio scripts, which, as texts to be published, are naturally subject to different criteria, such as arousing interest in an audience unfamiliar with the subject and at the same time being scientifically sound in every detail. And finally, thirdly, recording the scripts. Here, too, the recording must be appealing in terms of tempo, melody, etc., while at the same time being correct in every detail, for example, in the pronunciation of names and foreign words. This is followed by editing the recordings, which in turn requires knowledge of the relevant software.

In our case, there were additional elements such as expert interviews on the respective episode topic, original quotes recorded by native speakers, and detailed show notes. This required many additional individual steps: getting the right people excited about the project; coordinating questions; fitting the interviews into the episodes or writing meaningful short texts for the abstracts and short biographies for the show notes, etc. And, of course, we needed a title, a cover, a jingle, and a place to publish the podcast. Coordinating, moderating, providing individual academic support, and editorial supervision for all of this quickly exceeds the scope of a two-semester course. Therefore, one insight for me is that such a project should realistically be planned over a period of three semesters, and another is that, in terms of feasibility, less is more.

How did the funding help?

First of all, I would like to take this opportunity to once again express my sincere thanks to the Claussen Simon Foundation for its support. The funding enabled me to book workshops with a science podcaster and journalist, in which students were given insights into the journalistic tools of podcasting and conducting interviews, and received speech training.

Have you gotten any feedback yet, or maybe had some interesting conversations about the podcast?

The podcast is designed for young adults who are interested in art and history, but it also aims to appeal to anyone else who is interested in these topics. Fortunately, the feedback has been very positive so far, both among students and in my own circle. Recently, at a conference, a colleague I didn't know introduced herself as a fan of “Zwischen Pinsel und Pranger” – to my amazement, she had listened to all the episodes! In fact, the podcast is doing surprisingly well on L.I.S.A.: currently, the individual episodes have already reached between 2,500 and 1,000 clicks. That's why, with the release of the last episode at the end of December 2025, the editorial team decided to turn it into a L.I.S.A. podcast series and duplicate it on Spotify. This is, of course, a great honor for us! In addition, we will soon be available on other science podcast platforms.