This paper outlines examines how podcasting, combined with structured safe/brave space facilitation and democratic principles of teaching and learning can empower students to address generative issues (family, childhood, institutional power) in higher education. Drawing on Dewey's creative democracy, where knowledge emerges through non-hierarchical, iterative inquiry (Dewey 1939/2021), Felt’s (2009) ideas around epistemic spaces of learning and Arao & Clemens’ (2013) brave space framework, the paper outlines two university courses that treated students as co-inquirers rather than knowledge recipients in the development of their podcast assignments.

The Literature of Family (final-year undergraduate BA Arts, SETU Waterford, Ireland) explored literature's representation of diverse family structures through readings that highlighted underrepresented voices (Beautiful Thing by Jonathan Harvey (1993) and Unsettled by Rosaleen McDonagh (2021)) and N-TUTORR-funded staff-student curriculum redesign. Media and Childhood (Early Childhood Education, Greece) investigated institutional management of children's agency via a children's podcast production. Both courses explicitly rejected reproductive pedagogy, seeking instead to surface and negotiate power imbalances around topics such as race, disability, sexuality, and generational roles through shared readings, brave space seminars, and podcast assessment.

In Ireland, an online session with Dr Andrea Bramberger, co-editor of Reconceptualizing Safe Spaces: Supporting Inclusive Education (2021), introduced safe and brave space principles that students practised in seminars, then applied in group podcasts (20-40 mins), replacing essays. All completed SETU podcasting badges to prepare for this assessment. In Greece, students collaboratively defined safe spaces through children's podcast creation, negotiating technical and ethical challenges. The podcasts and reflections that resulted offered interesting findings in relation to the value of podcasting in creating safe spaces and offering marginalised voices a place from which to speak.

In Ireland, podcasting functioned as an epistemic living space (Felt 2009; O’Connor and O’Connor 2025), making situated, messy knowledges audible. Student prejudices were revealed in interesting moments of discussion, while the voice of a student with complex disabilities was centred in one submission, veering off the topic a little to consider issues of structural ableism and barriers to accessibility. In Greece, reflections highlighted the shift in thinking that occurred through podcasting, moving students from an emphasis on child protection to child empowerment. They also noted the power of music and song to operate as a shared, inclusive language.

The project demonstrated the ways in which podcasting serves as a space for generative and democratic knowledge creation. What was most central in both countries was the way in which podcasting enabled the development of the learner; it was not the technical achievement of producing the podcast itself that was most valued. Therefore, the project provides a transferable model for courses in which students can become democratically competent inquirers (Lake 2017).