BBC broadcaster and Sussex alumna Claudia Hammond with her former tutors, Dr Rod Bond (left) and Dr Helga Dittmar (right)..

BBC broadcaster and Sussex alumna Claudia Hammond gave invaluable media tips to psychology students and researchers when she paid a return visit to campus on Friday (17 May) and met up with some of her former tutors.

Claudia, who presents ‘All in The Mind’ on BBC Radio 4 and ‘Health Check’ for the BBC World Service, studied applied psychology at Sussex in the early 1990s and was taught by Dr Helga Dittmar and Dr Rod Bond.

She was invited back by the School of Psychology to talk about her dual career as a broadcast journalist and psychology academic.

“It took many years before I could combine the two,” she revealed. “I worked at the local BBC radio station in Brighton when I was a student and ended up doing the greyhound racing predictions for a while. I then took an MSc at Surrey and for a while I wasn’t sure whether to carry on with psychology or continue with radio, so I did both.”

She went on to teach Open University summer schools at Sussex, while also freelancing for various Radio 4 programmes, including ‘All in the Mind’, which was then hosted by Anthony Clare. She took over the show in 2006. “There wasn’t much psychology on Radio 4 at the time, so I began sneaking in more programmes.”

Claudia, whose books include Emotional Rollercoaster, has been feted for her work in raising the profile of psychology. Last year she won the Public Understanding of Neuroscience Award from the British Neuroscience Association and the British Psychological Society's Public Engagement and Media Award. But, she pointed out, there is still much to be done.

“There are very particular views of what it is psychologists do,” she said. “People think there are proper therapists and then there’s a daft lot who seem to be stating the obvious. They don’t seem to understand there is a broad spectrum of research going on.

“It’s really interesting that it’s the economists who seem to have got psychology more on the map. A lot of economists are turning to the research of behavioural scientists. Every government committee of inquiry always has at least one economist - rarely a psychologist - and yet there are so many social issues that psychology applies to. Lots of good research doesn’t get noticed.”

One approach is for the psychologists themselves to make their work more accessible. Claudia advised her audience to think about using Twitter and writing blogs to hone their skills in writing for general audiences, and to understand how news stories work.

“You need to put your findings in the first paragraph, which is the opposite to how you would write an academic paper. And you should make analogies and come up with examples that people can relate to. Don’t imagine you’re talking to your peers, otherwise you’ll use psychology terms that won’t be familiar to most audiences.”

She also gave tips on how to be interviewed, including the advantages of the live interview (you can get your message across more easily) versus a pre-record (all your “ums” and “ahs” would be edited out).

“Journalists basically just want you to fill the time with something that’s interesting. We get praised if the interviewees explain their work really well. Ninety-nine per cent of interviews are about trying to get people to say something interesting that other people haven’t heard about.”

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