[1] In 2013 she founded RadioDoc Review,[2] the first journal of critical analysis of crafted audio storytelling podcasts and features, for which she received an academic research award.
Her practice-based research, based on 50 oral histories, examined sectarianism between Catholics (mostly of Irish background) and Protestants (mostly Anglo and Scottish) in pre-multicultural Australia.
[18] It shed light on the historical allocations of water licences that would later become a contentious issue in management of the Murray-Darling Basin and examined the industry's use of pesticides via largely unregulated aerial spraying practices.
McHugh's fifth book was a fictional account of the Snowy Scheme through the eyes of a young girl, Eva Fischer, who grows up in the township of Cabramurra.
McHugh has also published a short memoir, "Power Cuts", in Wee Girls: Women writing from an Irish perspective (Spinifex 1996);[22] a chapter on pesticides and the cotton industry, "Cotton" in Asimov's Elephant (ABC Books, 2003);[23] and a chapter in an anthology about the Stolen Generations, "The Carers", in Many Voices: reflections on experiences of Indigenous child separation (National Library of Australia, 2002).
McHugh produced many other series for the Talking History and Hindsight slots: on the isolated mining town of Broken Hill, Australian women's experiences in the Vietnam war, the former Indigenous penal colony of Palm Island, the history of tourism in the Whitsundays, Irish orphan girls sent to Australia after the 1840s famine, the 1854 Eureka rebellion that was said to be the birthplace of Australian democracy and more.
[27] She also produced a documentary for ABC's religious slot, Encounter, that tracked Aboriginal leader Patrick Dodson's visit to Ireland (Reconciliation: From Broome to Belfast, 2001),[30] a feature for Radio Eye on Samoan chieftains' cultural influence on a drug-ridden housing project in western Sydney (Estate of Mind, 1999) and a documentary, Beagle Bay: Irish nuns and Stolen Children (2000), that explored personal stories of the Stolen Generations in the lead-up to national marches for reconciliation.
[32] McHugh's later works for ABC Radio National, also online as podcasts, include Eat Pray Mourn: Crime and Punishment in Jakarta (2013), an investigation, with Dr. Jacqui Baker, of extrajudicial police killings in Indonesia which won bronze at New York Radio Festivals;[33] and The Conquistador, The Warlpiri and the Dog Whisperer (2018), an exploration, with presenter Margo Neale, of how two Chilean women from opposed political backgrounds ended up running a successful Indigenous art centre in the Australian desert.
[36] Among her award-winning storytelling collaborations are The Greatest Menace, a queer history/true crime investigation into a 'gay prison' experiment described by one industry insider as 'Australia's S-Town', co-created by Patrick Abboud and Simon Cunich, and three podcasts made with The Age newsroom in Melbourne, on all of which she was consulting producer, advising on script, structure and storytelling-through-sound.
Wrong Skin (2018), examined the disappearance of a young couple from a remote Aboriginal community in Western Australia and the collision of culture and power.
[41] She later collaborated with Gertie's Law host Greg Muller on the podcast Motherlode, which traced the history of early hacktivism, including the back story to Julian Assange.
McHugh conceived and devised the award-winning podcast Heart of Artness, which she co-hosts with Margo Neale,[42] Head of Indigenous Knowledges at the National Museum of Australia.
She has also written articles on podcasting for WAN-IFRA (World Association of Newspapers…) UNESCO, the Sydney Morning Herald and Transom.org and an invited series for Flow Journal at University of Austin.
[54] She has conducted podcasting masterclasses and workshops for many groups, including Rutas del Conflicto in Colombia, the Sydney Writers Festival, the Australian War Memorial, the Voice of Vietnam state broadcaster and the ABU.
They include interviews about the Snowy Mountains Scheme, Australian women in the Vietnam war, the cotton industry, sectarianism and mixed marriage, a history of Bronte and surf lifesaving, Millers Point in Sydney's historic Rocks area, Green Bans activist Jack Mundey,[59] architect Harry Seidler and the Irish National Association.