Seven questions with Miguel Dos Santos

28 April 2016

This week we put seven questions to Miguel Dos Santos, a Philosophy PhD student and co-founder of

knowitwall.com/">Know it Wall - a public engagement website, based at UCL, that aims to popularise research across all disciplines, from arts to sciences.

Why are you interested in this subject and what do you plan to do in the future?

I think it all boils down to intellectual curiosity. When you study philosophy, you can go from writing, in a single academic term, about why Einstein's general relativity is a scientific theory (as opposed to a pseudo-scientific one) to writing about whether we were sad for Dumbledore when we read about his death in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (think about it - Dumbledore doesn't exist). I find that fascinating, and it seems to me that it is this immense intellectual curiosity about many different topics that drives most people to philosophy.

As for the future, being a PhD student and a teaching assistant at UCL makes me an academic, and they say that, once an academic, always an academic. So I guess that's all there is to say about that.

What is the most interesting thing you've done, seen or got involved with while at UCL?

Know it Wall - without a doubt! This is a project that I recently co-founded with Jérémie Coullon (a UCL Maths PhD student) and Angus Waite (a UCL history graduate), and it's something we are really passionate about.

It all started when we realised that there is a serious problem in academia that has yet to be solved. There is incredibly interesting research being carried out at universities like UCL that never reaches the general, non-academic public - research that, in the majority of cases, has been funded by everyone, through taxes. So we came up with Know it Wall as a solution. It is a website where academics in any discipline - from physics and philosophy to history and biology - can popularise their research through short documentaries in audio format but soon in video format too.

But that's just the beginning, since our developers are currently working on a technology/concept that will allow us not only to start aggregating content from other sources but also to understand, with the help of the public, how different topics and academic disciplines are connected. We want to be the go-to place on the Web for public engagement across the arts and sciences.

It's all pretty exciting because we started this from nothing and have now a team of around 8 people, and are actually looking for more talented UCL students to join Know it Wall as filmmakers, audio producers and web developers.

Have you discovered any 'hidden gems' during your time at UCL?

I've actually discovered a new one recently - the former house of Frederic Leighton, a 19th-century English artist. It's known as the Leighton House and is located in Holland Park. Don't let the austere outside fool you; it's part of the reason why it is a hidden gem.

Give us your top three things to do/see/go to in London.

My top things to do in London at the moment include going to the National Gallery just to see Canaletto's paintings of Venice (their level of detail is remarkable), watching films at the Electric Cinema in Notting Hill (though it's a little pricey), and attending Friday Late events at the South Kensington museums (V&A, Natural History and Science), which is what I'm most likely going to do this Friday.

If you were Provost for the day what one thing would you do?

I'd allocate more resources to public engagement, and by that I don't necessarily mean money, since we've so far built and developed Know it Wall without funding.

UCL is an impressive institution in many ways. One of them is that it produces research in pretty much all academic disciplines there are and yet, within its infrastructure, it has nothing like Birkbeck's Derek Jarman Lab, which makes documentary films with students and staff (even if in an unsystematic fashion) about research-related topics.

That's even more surprising when you realise that the UCL Film Society is probably one of the best societies of its kind in the country, so it is certainly not because of lack of existing talent that something similar hasn't been set up at UCL yet. I hope the Provost actually reads this.

Who inspires you and why?

This is a tough one because I've never had any 'idols', in the conventional sense. But if I force myself to think of people I look up to, at least two living people come immediately to mind: Nick Bostrom and Elon Musk.

Bostrom because he has managed to conduct cutting-edge academic research in philosophy while never losing sight of the need to popularise it among a much broader audience.

Musk because anyone who is into entrepreneurship, like myself, cannot help but admire his grand ambition and vision; it's like he never stopped being the sci-fi fanatic of his teenage years.

What would it surprise people to know about you?

I used to play football almost at a professional level, having started out at Sporting Lisbon when I was only 8 years old. I was so into it that my teachers at the time (not to mention my mother) were worried I was going to leave school at 18 to become a professional footballer. That never happened, and here I am doing a PhD and teaching philosophy at UCL - as you do, when you quit football.