New Generation Thinkers 2022

Title

First
Broadcast

Comments

A Family Of Witches

20230405

An 8-year-old who condemns his own mother to execution in 1582: New Generation Thinker Emma Whipday, who researches Renaissance literature at Newcastle University, has been reading witch trial records from Elizabethan and Jacobean England to explore how they depict single mothers. And she finds chilling echoes of their language in newspaper articles in our own times.

Producer: Ruth Watts

Emma Whipday is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker 2022 on the scheme which puts research on the radio. You can find her sharing her thoughts on Free Thinking episodes about Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare, Cross-dressing, Step-mothers, and Tudor families.

Emma Whipday explores the demonisation of single mothers in English witch trials.

Charles Babbage And Broadcasting The Sea

20230404

The noisy Victorian world annoyed the mathematician, philosopher and inventor Charles Babbage, who came up with the idea of a programmable computer. He wrote letters complaining about it and a pamphlet which explored ideas about whether the sea could record its own sound, had a memory and could broadcast sound. New Generation Thinker Joan Passey, from the University of Bristol, sets these ideas alongside the work done by engineers cabling the sea-bed to allow communication via telegraph and Rudyard Kipling's images of these 'sea monsters.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in partnership with BBC Radio 3. Ten early career academics are chosen each year to share their research on radio. You can find a collection of discussions, features and essays on the Free Thinking programme page.

Joan Passey can be heard in Free Thinking episodes discussing Cornwall and Coastal Gothic, Oceans and the Sea at the Hay Festival 2022, Vampires and the Penny Dreadful.

The father of modern computing thought the sea could communicate. Joan Passey tells us why

Children Of The Waters

20230411

An ancient Japanese Buddhist ritual which involves a red baby bib, a small statue and water, has been taken up by women wanting to have some way of marking a miscarriage and the life not lived. New Generation Thinker Sabina Dosani is a psychiatrist and writer doing research at the University of East Anglia. Her essay looks at the language we use for unborn children who die and at what we can learn about mourning rituals from the work of the 19th-century French sociologist Emile Durkheim, to modern services performed by Rabbis, in cathedrals and in peoples' back gardens.

Producer: Ruth Watts

Sabina Dosani is one of the ten New Generation Thinkers chosen in 2022 to work with BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to share their research. You can hear her in Free Thinking discussion episodes called Mental Health, Stepmothers and Depicting AIDS in Drama. All episodes of Free Thinking and this Essay series from New Generation Thinkers are available on BBC Sounds and to download as Arts & Ideas podcasts.

Sabina Dosani on the ritual of Mizuko Kuyo and modern ceremonies marking miscarriage.

Fighting The Colour Bar

20230414

Len Johnson, barred from fighting title bouts, had his career stopped short by a colour bar', but went onto fight against racism outside the ring. A campaign in Manchester is seeking to erect a statue to commemorate his success both in boxing and activism, which led to the ending of a ban in local pubs which had meant he was being refused service. His story of resistance is explored in this Essay from New Generation Thinker Shirin Hirsch, who is based at Manchester Metropolitan University and the People's History Museum.

Producer: Ruth Thomson.

Shirin Hirsch is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to share their research as radio. You can hear more from her in a Free Thinking discussion about May Day Rituals and you can find a whole series of features, essays and discussions with New Generation Thinkers drawn from the scheme, which has been running for more than a decade, on the Free Thinking programme website.

Shirin Hirsch explores the way boxer Len Johnson fought a Manchester pub ban.

Fugitive Slaves, Victorian Justice

20230406

The trial of sisters begging on the streets of South London led to donations sent in by Victorian newspaper readers and an investigation by the Mendicity Society. New Generation Thinker Oskar Jensen, from Newcastle University, unearthed this story of the Avery girls in the archives and his essay explores the way attitudes to former slaves and to the reform of criminals affected the sisters' sentencing.

Producer: Ruth Watts

Ten New Generation Thinkers are selected each year to share their research on radio as part of the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. You can find a collection of discussions, essays and features from academics who have been part of the scheme over the past ten years on the Free Thinking programme website.

You can hear more from Oskar in a Free Thinking programmes called Victorian Streets, Busking and Billy Waters. His book Vagabonds: Life on the Streets of Nineteenth-century London is out now.

Oskar Jensen tells the tall tale of a court case inspired by a best-selling novel.

Land And Soil Politics

20230413

From nature as 'a living whole' in the ideas of Goethe and Alexander von Humboldt to the 'Blood and Soil' ideas of Nazi Germany: New Generation Thinker Jim Scown, from Cardiff University, traces the links between ideas about the order of nature to more troubling views about links with the land that led organic pioneer Jorian Jenks to refer to 'alien hands' tilling 'British soil'.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Jim Scown on the links between Goethe, George Eliot and the storming of the US Capitol.

Revolutionary Free Speech

20230407

Cancel culture' is used to describe debates which touch on freedom of expression today but what can we learn if we look back at events after the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen? Clare Siviter, who lectures on the French Revolution and theatre at the University of Bristol, takes us through the experiences of playwrights and authors, Marie-Joseph Ch退nier, Olympe de Gouges, Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard and Destutt de Tracy, who wrote about how ideas spread.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

You can find a collection of essays, discussions and features which showcase the research of New Generation Thinkers on the Free Thinking programme website. The Arts and Humanities Research Council has worked with BBC Radio 3 on the scheme since 2012.

Clare Siviter looks at attempts to liberate and then censor expression in 1790s France.

Stupid Victorians

20230412

From 'dull' to 'feeble-minded' - the qualities associated with stupidity altered during the Victorian period alongside changes to schooling and education policies. Dr Louise Creechan, from Durham University, looks at the findings of the 1861 Newcastle Commission and at a range of characters in novels. We hear about the sibling rivalry of Maggie and Tom Tulliver and different ideas about male and female capabilities expressed in George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss (1860) and ideas about education and teaching in Charles' Dickens Our Mutual Friend (1864-65) and Hard Times (1854).

Producer: Luke Mulhall

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to turn research into radio. You can hear Louise Creechan discussing her research in episodes of Free Thinking called How We Read https://www.BBC.co.uk/programmes/m001cgks and Teaching and Inspiration https://www.BBC.co.uk/programmes/m00169jh

Louise Creechan looks at the impact of 19th-century ideas about intelligence.

The Discordant Tale Of Thomas Weelkes

20230410

Known for madrigals, organ playing and disorderly conduct - Thomas Weelkes wrote his first published pieces when young and went on to work in Winchester college and Chichester cathedral. 400 years after his death, New Generation Thinker Ellie Chan, from the University of Manchester, digs beneath the mythology surrounding his life and music.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten early career academics each year who turn their research into radio. You can find a collection of discussions, essays and features focusing on their new research on the Free Thinking programme website and you can hear more from Ellie Chan in an episode called The Tudor Mind.

Ellie Chan looks at the life and music of the Tudor composer who died 400 years ago.

The South African Bloomsberries

20230403

Race relations aren't always thought of as being linked with the experimental writing and art promoted by the Bloomsbury set in 1920s Britain but New Generation Thinker Jade Munslow Ong, from the University of Salford, argues that without a group of South African authors who came to Britain we might not have Virginia Woolf's Orlando. But Roy Campbell, William Plomer and Laurens Van der Post weren't the only writers from that country with a Bloomsbury connection. A founder of the Native National Congress - later the ANC - was also hard at work on a novel which depicted an interracial friendship.

Producer: Ruth Thomson

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to turn their research into essays, features and discussions. You can find a collection featuring their insights on the Free Thinking programme page, available on BBC Sounds and to download as the Arts and Ideas podcast.

You can hear more from Jade in discussions called Modernism around the World and South African writing.

Jade Munslow Ong reads 20s writing by Solomon T Plaatje, Roy Campbell and William Plomer.

Episodes

Title	First Broadcast	Comments
A Family Of Witches	20230405	An 8-year-old who condemns his own mother to execution in 1582: New Generation Thinker Emma Whipday, who researches Renaissance literature at Newcastle University, has been reading witch trial records from Elizabethan and Jacobean England to explore how they depict single mothers. And she finds chilling echoes of their language in newspaper articles in our own times. Producer: Ruth Watts Emma Whipday is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker 2022 on the scheme which puts research on the radio. You can find her sharing her thoughts on Free Thinking episodes about Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare, Cross-dressing, Step-mothers, and Tudor families. Emma Whipday explores the demonisation of single mothers in English witch trials.
Charles Babbage And Broadcasting The Sea	20230404	The noisy Victorian world annoyed the mathematician, philosopher and inventor Charles Babbage, who came up with the idea of a programmable computer. He wrote letters complaining about it and a pamphlet which explored ideas about whether the sea could record its own sound, had a memory and could broadcast sound. New Generation Thinker Joan Passey, from the University of Bristol, sets these ideas alongside the work done by engineers cabling the sea-bed to allow communication via telegraph and Rudyard Kipling's images of these 'sea monsters. Producer: Torquil MacLeod New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in partnership with BBC Radio 3. Ten early career academics are chosen each year to share their research on radio. You can find a collection of discussions, features and essays on the Free Thinking programme page. Joan Passey can be heard in Free Thinking episodes discussing Cornwall and Coastal Gothic, Oceans and the Sea at the Hay Festival 2022, Vampires and the Penny Dreadful. The father of modern computing thought the sea could communicate. Joan Passey tells us why
Children Of The Waters	20230411	An ancient Japanese Buddhist ritual which involves a red baby bib, a small statue and water, has been taken up by women wanting to have some way of marking a miscarriage and the life not lived. New Generation Thinker Sabina Dosani is a psychiatrist and writer doing research at the University of East Anglia. Her essay looks at the language we use for unborn children who die and at what we can learn about mourning rituals from the work of the 19th-century French sociologist Emile Durkheim, to modern services performed by Rabbis, in cathedrals and in peoples' back gardens. Producer: Ruth Watts Sabina Dosani is one of the ten New Generation Thinkers chosen in 2022 to work with BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to share their research. You can hear her in Free Thinking discussion episodes called Mental Health, Stepmothers and Depicting AIDS in Drama. All episodes of Free Thinking and this Essay series from New Generation Thinkers are available on BBC Sounds and to download as Arts & Ideas podcasts. Sabina Dosani on the ritual of Mizuko Kuyo and modern ceremonies marking miscarriage.
Fighting The Colour Bar	20230414	Len Johnson, barred from fighting title bouts, had his career stopped short by a colour bar', but went onto fight against racism outside the ring. A campaign in Manchester is seeking to erect a statue to commemorate his success both in boxing and activism, which led to the ending of a ban in local pubs which had meant he was being refused service. His story of resistance is explored in this Essay from New Generation Thinker Shirin Hirsch, who is based at Manchester Metropolitan University and the People's History Museum. Producer: Ruth Thomson. Shirin Hirsch is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to share their research as radio. You can hear more from her in a Free Thinking discussion about May Day Rituals and you can find a whole series of features, essays and discussions with New Generation Thinkers drawn from the scheme, which has been running for more than a decade, on the Free Thinking programme website. Shirin Hirsch explores the way boxer Len Johnson fought a Manchester pub ban.
Fugitive Slaves, Victorian Justice	20230406	The trial of sisters begging on the streets of South London led to donations sent in by Victorian newspaper readers and an investigation by the Mendicity Society. New Generation Thinker Oskar Jensen, from Newcastle University, unearthed this story of the Avery girls in the archives and his essay explores the way attitudes to former slaves and to the reform of criminals affected the sisters' sentencing. Producer: Ruth Watts Ten New Generation Thinkers are selected each year to share their research on radio as part of the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. You can find a collection of discussions, essays and features from academics who have been part of the scheme over the past ten years on the Free Thinking programme website. You can hear more from Oskar in a Free Thinking programmes called Victorian Streets, Busking and Billy Waters. His book Vagabonds: Life on the Streets of Nineteenth-century London is out now. Oskar Jensen tells the tall tale of a court case inspired by a best-selling novel.
Land And Soil Politics	20230413	From nature as 'a living whole' in the ideas of Goethe and Alexander von Humboldt to the 'Blood and Soil' ideas of Nazi Germany: New Generation Thinker Jim Scown, from Cardiff University, traces the links between ideas about the order of nature to more troubling views about links with the land that led organic pioneer Jorian Jenks to refer to 'alien hands' tilling 'British soil'. Producer: Torquil MacLeod Jim Scown on the links between Goethe, George Eliot and the storming of the US Capitol.
Revolutionary Free Speech	20230407	Cancel culture' is used to describe debates which touch on freedom of expression today but what can we learn if we look back at events after the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen? Clare Siviter, who lectures on the French Revolution and theatre at the University of Bristol, takes us through the experiences of playwrights and authors, Marie-Joseph Ch退nier, Olympe de Gouges, Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard and Destutt de Tracy, who wrote about how ideas spread. Producer: Torquil MacLeod You can find a collection of essays, discussions and features which showcase the research of New Generation Thinkers on the Free Thinking programme website. The Arts and Humanities Research Council has worked with BBC Radio 3 on the scheme since 2012. Clare Siviter looks at attempts to liberate and then censor expression in 1790s France.
Stupid Victorians	20230412	From 'dull' to 'feeble-minded' - the qualities associated with stupidity altered during the Victorian period alongside changes to schooling and education policies. Dr Louise Creechan, from Durham University, looks at the findings of the 1861 Newcastle Commission and at a range of characters in novels. We hear about the sibling rivalry of Maggie and Tom Tulliver and different ideas about male and female capabilities expressed in George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss (1860) and ideas about education and teaching in Charles' Dickens Our Mutual Friend (1864-65) and Hard Times (1854). Producer: Luke Mulhall New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to turn research into radio. You can hear Louise Creechan discussing her research in episodes of Free Thinking called How We Read https://www.BBC.co.uk/programmes/m001cgks and Teaching and Inspiration https://www.BBC.co.uk/programmes/m00169jh Louise Creechan looks at the impact of 19th-century ideas about intelligence.
The Discordant Tale Of Thomas Weelkes	20230410	Known for madrigals, organ playing and disorderly conduct - Thomas Weelkes wrote his first published pieces when young and went on to work in Winchester college and Chichester cathedral. 400 years after his death, New Generation Thinker Ellie Chan, from the University of Manchester, digs beneath the mythology surrounding his life and music. Producer: Luke Mulhall New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten early career academics each year who turn their research into radio. You can find a collection of discussions, essays and features focusing on their new research on the Free Thinking programme website and you can hear more from Ellie Chan in an episode called The Tudor Mind. Ellie Chan looks at the life and music of the Tudor composer who died 400 years ago.
The South African Bloomsberries	20230403	Race relations aren't always thought of as being linked with the experimental writing and art promoted by the Bloomsbury set in 1920s Britain but New Generation Thinker Jade Munslow Ong, from the University of Salford, argues that without a group of South African authors who came to Britain we might not have Virginia Woolf's Orlando. But Roy Campbell, William Plomer and Laurens Van der Post weren't the only writers from that country with a Bloomsbury connection. A founder of the Native National Congress - later the ANC - was also hard at work on a novel which depicted an interracial friendship. Producer: Ruth Thomson New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to turn their research into essays, features and discussions. You can find a collection featuring their insights on the Free Thinking programme page, available on BBC Sounds and to download as the Arts and Ideas podcast. You can hear more from Jade in discussions called Modernism around the World and South African writing. Jade Munslow Ong reads 20s writing by Solomon T Plaatje, Roy Campbell and William Plomer.