How do you teach a current, controversial topic such as Brexit? Claire Gordon speaks to Tony Travers and Swati Dhingra, two well-known academics about how they discuss Brexit in their classrooms. How do lecturers incorporate Brexit into their curricula when teaching? How do they teach such a polarising topic and what has the response from students been? Tony teaches a course on The Politics and the Policies of Brexit: the UK’s changing relationship with the European Union, a course for undergraduates and postgraduates. He is the Director of LSE London and a professor in the School of Public Policy. Swati is based in the Department of Economics and teaches courses in international economics at the undergraduate, Master’s, and doctoral levels.
It does challenge you to think not only about putting together another course, but exactly how one is going to fairly represent all the aspects of it ... given it's a highly contested issue, exactly how to do that is a great test for academics
Claire Gordon (centre) hosts the second LSE HE Blog podcast with Swati Dhingra (left) and Tony Travers (right)
I can't say anything about what it's done to the economy, but in terms of moving the economics profession forward and getting more students interested, [Brexit's] had a very positive impact.
Students can feel that their knowledge and background and prior experience is relevant even in the context of discussing something which seems rather at least initially Euro-centric or British-centric even.
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This post is opinion-based and does not reflect the views of the London School of Economics and Political Science or any of its constituent departments and divisions.
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Credits
Host: Claire Gordon
Guests: Swati Dhingra and Tony Travers
Producer: Chris Doughty
Equipment: Courtesy of the LSE US Centre
Soundtrack: Nap All Day, Sleep All Night, Party Never Courtesy of Fintan Stack
Feature image: Photo by Sandro Cenni on Unsplash
We are very grateful to our guests and partners who collaborated with us to make this podcast a reality.
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