Paul and Intifar “In Conversation…”

The CLT recently caught up with two members of the ANU community, Professor Paul Francis and Intifar Chowdhury,  as part of a new “In Conversation With…” video series which seeks to pair two academics from different parts of the campus and different stages of their careers.

They reflected on the role teaching has played in their journeys and shared stories about keeping inspired, failed experiments, advice to younger selves and the impact they hope to have on students lives.

Plus a few fashion tips, time travel experiments, how to stop your students from becoming future dictators and keep focus in hard times.

Many thanks to both Paul and Intifar for their time and wisdom! Catch up on past edition and keep an eye out for the next instalment of "In Conversation..." here.

This edition's session can be viewed as a VIDEO and as a AUDIO PODCAST. Along with 8 shorter thematic extracts.


Professor Paul Francis is from the Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics and a ANU Distinguished Educator

Intifar Chowdhury is from the School of Politics and International Relations

Rafael Florez is the multimedia producer in the Communications team of the Centre for Learning and Teaching (CLT)


Meet Paul and Intifar


Important academic attributes


Challenges an early career academica


Impact on students lives


The fear of failure and pastoral care for students


Teaching as a career and
advice to younger selves


Experiments, innovation and

the lessons learnt in failure


The waistcoat and goodbye!

September 2020