The Rights Track – A Research Podcasts Case Study

At Research Podcasts, we specialise in helping academics and institutions amplify their research through compelling audio. This case study explores how our podcast production expertise facilitated the successful launch of The Rights Track, a project that transformed two decades of human rights insights into a widely accessible and impactful podcast.

Dr Todd Landman, the creator of The Rights Track, recognised that while traditional academic outputs are invaluable, they often fall short in fostering the deeper, more dynamic conversations crucial for contemporary human rights discourse. The vision for a research podcast emerged as a powerful solution, offering a new avenue for engaging diverse audiences and sparking meaningful dialogue.

Producing a sophisticated academic podcast like The Rights Track goes beyond simply having a compelling topic. It demands strategic forethought, meticulous planning, and robust technical execution. Our collaboration included developing a strong brand identity, creating an intuitive website, and establishing the essential technical infrastructure for seamless podcast publishing. A cohesive visual identity and engaging content were paramount in attracting and retaining listeners.

The series structure of The Rights Track was carefully organized thematically, ensuring a coherent and impactful listener journey across multiple series and episodes. Our audio production approach blended intentional guest selection with the flexibility to respond to current events, leveraging “newsjacking” opportunities and aligning content with significant milestones like International Human Rights Day. This dynamic content strategy, coupled with strategic social media engagement to connect news stories with existing episodes, consistently expanded the podcast’s reach.

Podcasting offered the host a unique avenue for engaging with researchers, enabling more in-depth exploration of their work than typically possible in other contexts, such as conferences. Crucially, it provided an effective platform to reach new audiences who might not engage with extensive academic texts but found the podcast an efficient way to access critical facts about human rights challenges and solutions. Guests, including a diverse range of scholars, policymakers, religious figures, and NGO leaders, were encouraged to articulate their work in novel ways, fostering a mutual learning experience for both guests and the host.

Research Podcasts is committed to facilitating meaningful connections and tangible impact. For academics and researchers, appearing on The Rights Track opened vital pathways to impact, linking them directly with policymakers who tune in for relevant insights. Early career researchers, in particular, were enthusiastic about the significant dissemination and impact potential inherent in the podcast format. The podcast also fostered new networks and collaborations; for example, a statistician reached out after listening to an episode, leading to a co-authored paper on the risks of the Covid pandemic on free and fair elections. A remarkable “golden thread” of interconnected conversations also emerged, where guests, often unknowingly, built upon each other’s points across different episodes.

Over its seven-year run, The Rights Track successfully produced 65 podcasts featuring over 70 guests, accumulating more than 26 hours of recordings. This rich content covered vital topics such as women’s rights, modern slavery, human rights in the digital world, and the impact of Covid. The depth of information gathered through this dedicated research podcast even culminated in a 255-page book, The Rights Track; Sound Evidence on Human Rights and Modern Slavery which summarised the extensive knowledge gained.

In essence, creating The Rights Track as a Research Podcast provided the foundational framework, essential tools, and an expansive platform to move beyond traditional academic communication. This enabled deeper conversations, wider public engagement, unexpected collaborations, and significant, demonstrable impact in the vital field of human rights, all underpinned by expert podcast production and careful attention to the rights track for content dissemination.

Be inspired by Todd’s journey from knowing very little about podcasts to becoming a successful and engaging host of The Rights Track over 7 years. Find out how it helped him engage with a range of human rights academics and practitioners working in the field.

The video was produced and directed by Catherine McDonald of Popping Orange Ltd.