Siobhan McHugh

Siobhán McHugh is an internationally recognised podcast producer, critic, researcher, and author. Her book, The Power of Podcasting: telling stories through sound (NewSouth Books and Columbia University Press 2022), is a critique of podcasting as a vibrant new medium. A set text at several universities, it was mentioned on the Oprah Winfrey Network in 2024. She is founding editor (2014) of RadioDoc Review, an open access journal that was the first devoted to the theory and aesthetics of podcasts and audio documentaries.

Siobhán was consulting producer on The Greatest Menace (2022), a queer true crime/history podcast about a 'gay prison' experiment, hosted by Palestinian-Lebanese-Australian journalist Patrick Abboud. It won a Walkley Award for Excellence in Journalism, a gold award for Best Social Justice Podcast at New York Festivals, and Best True Crime and Best Creativity podcast at the Australian Podcast Awards among many other awards. Siobhan partnered with leading Australian newspaper The Age to transform investigative journalism into the hit podcasts Phoebe’s Fall (2016), about the bizarre death of a young woman in a garbage chute, Wrong Skin (2018), about the clash between Indigenous culture and corporate interests, and The Last Voyage of The Pong Su (2019), which examines a drug smuggling operation by a North Korean cargo ship on Australia’s southern coast. All three won gold at New York Festivals as well as many other awards. In 2019 she co-produced a groundbreaking podcast from the Supreme Court of Victoria, Gertie's Law, which won her a seventh gold at New York Festivals. She also co-hosts an award-winning academic research podcast, Heart of Artness, about crosscultural aspects of Aboriginal art.

Siobhán has published and spoken widely on the aesthetics of podcasting and the affective power of sound. Her article, The Narrative Podcast as Digital Literary Journalism: Conceptualizing S-Town (2022), won an annual prize awarded by the International Association for Literary Journalism Studies. Her MOOC, The Power of Podcasting for Storytelling (Future Learn 2019-2020), had over 35,000 participants from 150 countries. She is a contributor to the Routledge Companion to Radio and Podcasting Studies (2022) and the Oxford Handbook of Radio Studies (2024) and is founder and co-director of the Hub for Innovation in Podcasting (HIP). Siobhán is Honorary Associate Professor in Journalism at the University of Wollongong and Honorary Associate Professor in Media and Communications at Macquarie University.