New Generation Thinkers

Episode

Title

First
Broadcast

Repeated

Comments

A Norwegian Morality Tale

20210429

Eight churches were set on fire, and a taste for occult rituals and satanic imagery spiralled into suicide and murder in the Norwegian Black metal scene of the 1990s. Lucy Weir looks at the lessons we can take from this dark story about the way we look at mental health and newspaper reporting.

Producer: Emma Wallace

Dr Lucy Weir is a specialist in dance and performance at the University of Edinburgh. You can hear her discussing the impact of Covid on dance performances in this Free Thinking discussion about audiences https://www.BBC.co.uk/programmes/m000nvlc and her thoughts on dance and stillness https://www.BBC.co.uk/programmes/m000k33s

She is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to work with academics to turn their research into radio.

Lucy Weir learns dark lessons from newspaper coverage of Black Metal and satanic rituals.

A Social History Of Soup

20210421

The potato famine saw a Dublin barracks turned into place where starving people were given six minutes to eat their soup in silence. Tom Scott-Smith researches humanitarian relief and his Essay takes us from the father of the modern soup kitchen in 1790 Bavaria and the meaning of 'to rumfordize' to Boston, America a hundred years later and a recipe developed by an MIT Professor, Ellen Swallow Richards, which dunked meat in condensed milk and flour. What lessons about society's values can we take from their different recipes for soup?

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Tom Scott-Smith is Associate Professor of Refugee Studies and Forced Migration at the University of Oxford. He has published a book called On an Empty Stomach: Two Hundred Years of Hunger Relief, and taken part in a film project Shelter without Shelter which was the winner of one of the 2020 AHRC Research in Film Awards. This research was featured in an exhibition staged by the Imperial War Museum which you can hear about in the Free Thinking episode called Refugees.. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to choose ten academics each year who use their research to make radio programmes.

Tom Scott-Smith uses four recipes to track social reforms and changes in what we value.

Battlefield Finds

20210426

Gold fob seals, Sheffield silver, Mesolithic stone tools - these were some of the discoveries detailed in the 28 papers, books and pamphlets published by a soldier turned archaeologist who began looking at what you might find in the soil in the middle of a World War I battlefield. In her Essay, Seren Griffiths traces the way Francis Buckley used his training for military intelligence to shape the way he set about digging up and recording objects buried both in war-torn landscapes of France and then on the Yorkshire moors around his home.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Dr Seren Griffiths teaches at Manchester Metropolitan University and is involved in a project to use new scientific dating techniques to write the first historical narrative for two thousand years of what was previously 'prehistoric' Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain and Ireland. She has also organised public events at the excavations she co- directs at Bryn Celli Ddu in North Wales and you can hear her talking about midsummer at a Neolithic monument in an episode of Free Thinking.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to choose ten academics each year to turn their research into radio.

Seren Griffiths tells the story of the soldier turned archaeologist Francis Buckley.

Beyond The Betting Shop

20210428

Darragh McGee takes the long view of the risk-based games we have played throughout history. He explores the experiences of their losers and the moral censure that their losses have attracted; from the 18th-century gentry who learned to lose their fortune with good grace at the gaming tables of Bath to the twenty-first century smartphone user, facing an altogether more lonely ordeal. He considers the cultural history gambling - and, what the games we have staked our money on through the centuries, tell us about ourselves and society.

Producer: Ruth Watts

Dr Darragh McGee teaches in the Department for Health at the University of Bath. He 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 turn their research into radio. You can hear him talking about gambling in this Free Thinking episode

https://www.BBC.co.uk/programmes/m000khhq

Darragh McGee on the history of gambling, from 18th-century card games to phone apps.

Colonial Papers

20210427

The First Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Paris 1956 staged debates about colonial history which are still playing out in the protests of the Gilets Noirs. New Generation Thinker Alexandra Reza leafs through the pages of the journal Pr退sence Africaine, and picks out a short story by Ousmane Semb耀ne tracing the dreams of a young woman from Senegal. Her experiences are echoed in a new experimental patchwork of writing by Nathalie Quintane called Les enfants vont bien. And what links all of these examples is the idea of papers, cahiers and identity documents.

Producer: Emma Wallace

Alexandra Reza researches post-colonial literature at the University of Oxford. You can hear her in a Free Thinking discussion about Aim退 C退saire https://www.BBC.co.uk/programmes/m000nmxf

She also appears alongside Tariq Ali and Kehindre Andrews in a discussion Frantz Fanon's Writing https://www.BBC.co.uk/programmes/m000tdtn

And in last week's Free Thinking episode looking at the fiction of Maryse Cond退 https://www.BBC.co.uk/programmes/m000v86y

She is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Council to select academics to turn their research into radio.

Alexandra Reza's Essay considers the Gilets Noirs, Ousmane Semb\u00e8ne and Nathalie Quintane.

Hoarding Or Collecting?

20210423

Vivian Maier left over 150,000 negatives when she died in 2009. Her boxes and boxes of unprinted street photographs were stacked alongside shoulder-high piles of newspapers in her Chicago home. The artist Francis Bacon's studio has been painstakingly recreated in the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin complete with paint-spattered furniture and over 7,000 items. New Generation Thinker Diarmuid Hester's research looks at ideas about waste and in this Essay he considers what the difference might be between hoarding and collecting and between the stuff assembled by these artists and his own father's shelves of matchday programmes.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Dr Diarmuid Hester is radical cultural historian of the United States after 1950, and he teaches on sexually dissident literature, art, film, and performance at the University of Cambridge. He has published a critical biography of Dennis Cooper called Wrong and you can find his Essay for Radio 3 about Cooper in the series Books to Make Space For on the Bookshelf and his postcard about Derek Jarman's garden in the Free Thinking archives. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who turn their research into radio.

Diarmuid Hester sorts through stuff saved by Francis Bacon, Vivian Maier and his own dad.

In Praise Of Flatness

20210430

Why are mountains linked with uplifting feelings? Noreen Masud's Essay conjures the vast skies of Norfolk and the fantasy of hope felt by Kazuo Ishiguro's characters in his novel Never Let Me Go, the idea of openness described by Graham Swift in his fenland novel Waterland and the feeling of freedom felt by poet Stevie Smith who declared: 'I like - flatness. It lifts the weight from the nerves and the mind.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Dr Noreen Masud teaches literature at Durham University. You can hear her exploring aphorisms in this Sunday Feature https://www.BBC.co.uk/programmes/m000rtxb and debating Dada in this Free Thinking discussion https://www.BBC.co.uk/programmes/m000k9ws

She 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 who turn their research into radio.

Noreen Masud finds inspiration in fenlands, polished tables and Kazuo Ishiguro's novels.

Jean Rhys's Dress

20210420

Blousy chrysanthemums pattern the cotton dress, designed for wearing indoors, that a pregnant Sophie Oliver found herself owning. It helped her come to terms with motherhood. In this Essay, the New Generation Thinker reflects upon the daydreams of Jean Rhys, the way she tried to connect with her daughter Maryvonne through clothes and examples from her fiction where fashion allows dissatisfied female characters to express and transform themselves.

Producer: Ruth Watts

Dr Sophie Oliver lectures in English at the University of Liverpool and curated an exhibition at the British Library in 2016 - Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea and the Making of an Author. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who use their research to make radio programmes.

You can find Sophie discussing a novel based on the actress Ingrid Bergman, and the writing of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath in episodes of Free Thinking available on the programme website and BBC Sounds.

A pregnant Sophie Oliver found comfort in a floral outfit owned by the Caribbean author.

The Feurtado's Fire

20210419

Claude Mackay the Haarlem poet wrote about his experiences of an earthquake in Kingston in 1907. Twenty years earlier the city was putting itself back together following a devastating fire set off by a disgruntled employee. New Generation Thinker Christienna Fryar has been reading through diaries and archives and her Essay suggests that there are lessons we can take about the way societies rebuild after disasters.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Dr Christienna Fryar is Lecturer in Black British History at Goldsmiths London and convenor of the MA in Black British History, the first taught masters' programme of its kind in the UK. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Council to select ten academics each year to make radio programmes based on their research. You can find a playlist of discussions, documentaries and other Essays featuring New Generation Thinkers on the Free Thinking programme website which include Christienna hosting discussions about women and slavery, and talking with Professor Olivette Otele.

Christienna Fryar looks at Caribbean earthquakes and fires and lessons for rebuilding now.

The Inscrutable Writing Of Sui Sin Far

20210422

Chinatown, New York, in 1890 was described by photo-journalist Jacob Riis as 'disappointing.' He focused only on images of opium dens and gambling and complained about the people living there being 'secretive'. But could withholding your emotions be a deliberate tactic rather than a crass stereotype of inscrutability? Xine Yao has been reading short stories from the collection Mrs. Spring Fragrance, published in 1912 by Sui Sin Far and her Essay looks at what links the Asian American Exclusion Act of 1882, the first American federal law to exclude people on the basis of national or ethnic origin, to writings by the Martinican philosopher ɀdouard Glissant.

Producer: Caitlin Benedict.

Xine Yao researches early and nineteenth-century American literature and teaches at University College London. She hosts a podcast PhDivas and you can hear her in Free Thinking discussions about Darwin's Descent of Man, Mould-breaking Writing and in a programme with Ian Rankin and Tahmima Anam where she talks about science fiction. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to choose ten academics each year to turn their research into radio programmes.

Xine Yao suggests that a poker Chinese face can be a good way of fighting back

Food: Are We What We Eat?

20161003

From Spanish Inquisition stews and Reformation sausages to pork in French school dinners, New Generation Thinker Christopher Kissane from the London School of Economics explores the significance of food in past and present conflicts over identity.

The Essay is recorded in front of an audience as part of Sound Frontiers: BBC Radio 3 live at Southbank Centre

celebrating 7 decades of pioneering music and culture.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio.

Producer: Luke Mulhall.

Christopher Kissane explores the role of food in past and present conflicts over identity.

Rehabilitating The Reverend John Trusler

20180625

20191007 (R3)

Sophie Coulombeau tells the story of John Trusler, an eccentric Anglican minister who was the quintessential 18th-century entrepreneur. He was a prolific author, an innovative publisher, a would-be inventor, and a 'medical gentleman' of dubious qualifications. Dismissed by many as a conman and scoundrel, today, few have heard of the man but his madcap schemes often succeeded, in different forms, a century or two later. In his efforts we can trace the ancestors of the thesaurus, the self-help book, Comic Sans, professional ghostwriting, the Society of Authors, and electrotherapy. New Generation Thinker Sophie Coulombeau argues that telling his story can help us to reinterpret and rehabilitate the very idea of 'failure'.

Recorded with an audience at the York Festival of Ideas 2018.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the AHRC to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio.

Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

Sophie Coulombeau challenges the way we look at failure in the story of a C18 entrepreneur

Partitioned Memories

20160927

20161004 (R3)
20170818 (R3)

Memories of Partition explored by New Generation Thinker Anindya Raychaudhuri, from the University of St Andrews. He listens to oral histories and looks at film and literature depicting this key moment in history and the shadows it has cast. He reflects on the way people now frame their own experiences through representations of the mass migration which they have seen in news reels, films and fiction.

The Essay was recorded in front of an audience as part of Sound Frontiers: BBC Radio 3 live at Southbank Centre celebrating 7 decades of pioneering music and culture.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio. Applications are now open for the 2018 scheme. Further details and examples of other essays and broadcasts from New Generation Thinkers can be found on the Free Thinking programme website.

Anindya Raychaudhuri considers people's memories of India and Pakistan in 1947.

The Forgotten German Princess

20180626

20191008 (R3)

The most famous imposter of the seventeenth century - Mary Carleton. John Gallagher, of the University of Leeds, argues that the story of the 'German Princess' raises questions about what evidence we believe and the currency of shame.

Her real name was thought to be Mary Moders and she became a media sensation in Restoration London, after her husband's family, greedy for the riches they believed her to be concealing, accused her of bigamy and put her on trial for her life. Her life, and what remains to us of it, forces us to ask hard questions of the sources from her time. Whose word do we trust?

Recorded with an audience at the 2018 York Festival of Ideas.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio.

Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

The tale of Mary Moders, a C17 bigamist and media sensation, is retold by John Gallagher.

Sarah Scott And The Dream Of A Female Utopia

20180627

20191009 (R3)

A radical community of women set up in 1760s rural England is explored in an essay from New Generation Thinker Lucy Powell, recorded with an audience at the 2018 York Festival of Ideas.

Sarah Scott's first novel, published in 1750, was a conventional French-style romance, the fitting literary expression of a younger daughter of the lesser gentry. One year later, she had scandalously fled her husband's house, and pooled finances and set up home with her life-long partner, Lady Barbara Montagu. Her fourth novel, Millennium Hall, described in practical detail the communal existence of a group of women who had taken refuge in each other's company and created an all-female utopia in rural England. On Lady Bab's death, in 1765, Scott would attempt to create this radical community in actuality. Lucy Powell will explore the life, work, and far-reaching influence of this extraordinary writer.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio.

Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

Lucy Powell tells the story of a radical community of women set up in 1760s rural England.

Telephone Terrors

20160928

20161005 (R3)

In 1912 Freud compared psychoanalysis to using the telephone, an instrument he disliked. Reflecting on this fear of the phone, the poet and New Generation Thinker Sarah Jackson, from Nottingham Trent University, explores the telephone's voices in philosophy and fiction.

The Essay is recorded in front of an audience as part of Sound Frontiers: BBC Radio 3 live at Southbank Centre celebrating 7 decades of pioneering music and culture.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio.

Producer: Fiona McLean.

Poet Sarah Jackson explores the phone and its voices in philosophy and fiction.

John Gower, The Forgotten Medieval Poet

20180628

20191010 (R3)

The lawyer turned poet whose response to political upheaval has lessons for our time - explored by New Generation Thinker Seb Falk with an audience at the York Festival of Ideas

The 14th century's most eloquent pessimist, John Gower has forever been overshadowed by his funnier friend Chaucer. Yet his trilingual poetry is truly encyclopedic, mixing social commentary, romance and even science. Writing 'somewhat of lust, somewhat of lore', Gower's response to political upheaval was to 'shoot my arrows at the world'. Whether you want to be cured of lovesickness or learn the secrets of alchemy, John Gower has something to tell you.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio.

Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

Curing lovesickness or learning alchemy's secrets. Seb Falk on Chaucer's friend John Gower

Strindberg And 'the Woman Question'

20160929

20161006 (R3)

In October 1884 the playwright August Strindberg took a train from exile to face a charge of blasphemy in court. New Generation Thinker Leah Broad, from the University of Oxford, reflects on 'the woman question' in nineteenth century Scandinavian countries and what their debates have to say to us today.

The Essay is recorded in front of an audience as part of Sound Frontiers: BBC Radio 3 live at Southbank Centre celebrating 7 decades of pioneering music and culture.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

Leah Broad considers 'the woman question' in 19th-century Scandinavian countries.

05 LAST

Elizabeth Cady Stanton And Women's Rights

20180629

20191011 (R3)

170 years ago one woman launched the beginning of the modern women's rights movement in America. New Generation Thinker Joanna Cohen of Queen Mary University of London looks back at her story and what lessons it has for politics now.

In the small town of Seneca Falls in upstate New York, Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote The Declaration of Sentiments, a manifesto that took one of the nation's most revered founding documents, Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, and turned its condemnation of British tyranny into a blistering attack on the tyranny of American men. But why did Stanton choose to rebrand her claim for rights with the power of sentiment?

Recorded with an audience at the York Festival of Ideas.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio programmes.

Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

Joanna Cohen looks back at the manifesto which remodelled the Declaration of Independence.

05 LAST

The Rise And Fall Of The Hairdresser

20160930

20161007 (R3)

In 1815 an anonymous author published 'Memoirs of an Old Wig' and lamented the influx of French hairdressers to England. From the writings of ETA Hoffmann and Charles Dickens, from Hans Christian Andersen to Balzac and beyond, New Generation Thinker Seကn Williams considers the depiction of hairdressers in prints and prose and what it tells us about a transformative period in British and European history.

The Essay is recorded in front of an audience as part of Sound Frontiers: BBC Radio 3 live at Southbank Centre celebrating 7 decades of pioneering music and culture.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio.

Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

New Generation Thinker Se\u00e1n Williams on the depiction of hairdressers in prints and prose

Episodes

Episode	Title	First Broadcast	Repeated	Comments
	A Norwegian Morality Tale	20210429		Eight churches were set on fire, and a taste for occult rituals and satanic imagery spiralled into suicide and murder in the Norwegian Black metal scene of the 1990s. Lucy Weir looks at the lessons we can take from this dark story about the way we look at mental health and newspaper reporting. Producer: Emma Wallace Dr Lucy Weir is a specialist in dance and performance at the University of Edinburgh. You can hear her discussing the impact of Covid on dance performances in this Free Thinking discussion about audiences https://www.BBC.co.uk/programmes/m000nvlc and her thoughts on dance and stillness https://www.BBC.co.uk/programmes/m000k33s She is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to work with academics to turn their research into radio. Lucy Weir learns dark lessons from newspaper coverage of Black Metal and satanic rituals.
	A Social History Of Soup	20210421		The potato famine saw a Dublin barracks turned into place where starving people were given six minutes to eat their soup in silence. Tom Scott-Smith researches humanitarian relief and his Essay takes us from the father of the modern soup kitchen in 1790 Bavaria and the meaning of 'to rumfordize' to Boston, America a hundred years later and a recipe developed by an MIT Professor, Ellen Swallow Richards, which dunked meat in condensed milk and flour. What lessons about society's values can we take from their different recipes for soup? Producer: Torquil MacLeod Tom Scott-Smith is Associate Professor of Refugee Studies and Forced Migration at the University of Oxford. He has published a book called On an Empty Stomach: Two Hundred Years of Hunger Relief, and taken part in a film project Shelter without Shelter which was the winner of one of the 2020 AHRC Research in Film Awards. This research was featured in an exhibition staged by the Imperial War Museum which you can hear about in the Free Thinking episode called Refugees.. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to choose ten academics each year who use their research to make radio programmes. Tom Scott-Smith uses four recipes to track social reforms and changes in what we value.
	Battlefield Finds	20210426		Gold fob seals, Sheffield silver, Mesolithic stone tools - these were some of the discoveries detailed in the 28 papers, books and pamphlets published by a soldier turned archaeologist who began looking at what you might find in the soil in the middle of a World War I battlefield. In her Essay, Seren Griffiths traces the way Francis Buckley used his training for military intelligence to shape the way he set about digging up and recording objects buried both in war-torn landscapes of France and then on the Yorkshire moors around his home. Producer: Torquil MacLeod Dr Seren Griffiths teaches at Manchester Metropolitan University and is involved in a project to use new scientific dating techniques to write the first historical narrative for two thousand years of what was previously 'prehistoric' Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain and Ireland. She has also organised public events at the excavations she co- directs at Bryn Celli Ddu in North Wales and you can hear her talking about midsummer at a Neolithic monument in an episode of Free Thinking. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to choose ten academics each year to turn their research into radio. Seren Griffiths tells the story of the soldier turned archaeologist Francis Buckley.
	Beyond The Betting Shop	20210428		Darragh McGee takes the long view of the risk-based games we have played throughout history. He explores the experiences of their losers and the moral censure that their losses have attracted; from the 18th-century gentry who learned to lose their fortune with good grace at the gaming tables of Bath to the twenty-first century smartphone user, facing an altogether more lonely ordeal. He considers the cultural history gambling - and, what the games we have staked our money on through the centuries, tell us about ourselves and society. Producer: Ruth Watts Dr Darragh McGee teaches in the Department for Health at the University of Bath. He 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 turn their research into radio. You can hear him talking about gambling in this Free Thinking episode https://www.BBC.co.uk/programmes/m000khhq Darragh McGee on the history of gambling, from 18th-century card games to phone apps.
	Colonial Papers	20210427		The First Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Paris 1956 staged debates about colonial history which are still playing out in the protests of the Gilets Noirs. New Generation Thinker Alexandra Reza leafs through the pages of the journal Pr退sence Africaine, and picks out a short story by Ousmane Semb耀ne tracing the dreams of a young woman from Senegal. Her experiences are echoed in a new experimental patchwork of writing by Nathalie Quintane called Les enfants vont bien. And what links all of these examples is the idea of papers, cahiers and identity documents. Producer: Emma Wallace Alexandra Reza researches post-colonial literature at the University of Oxford. You can hear her in a Free Thinking discussion about Aim退 C退saire https://www.BBC.co.uk/programmes/m000nmxf She also appears alongside Tariq Ali and Kehindre Andrews in a discussion Frantz Fanon's Writing https://www.BBC.co.uk/programmes/m000tdtn And in last week's Free Thinking episode looking at the fiction of Maryse Cond退 https://www.BBC.co.uk/programmes/m000v86y She is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Council to select academics to turn their research into radio. Alexandra Reza's Essay considers the Gilets Noirs, Ousmane Semb\u00e8ne and Nathalie Quintane.
	Hoarding Or Collecting?	20210423		Vivian Maier left over 150,000 negatives when she died in 2009. Her boxes and boxes of unprinted street photographs were stacked alongside shoulder-high piles of newspapers in her Chicago home. The artist Francis Bacon's studio has been painstakingly recreated in the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin complete with paint-spattered furniture and over 7,000 items. New Generation Thinker Diarmuid Hester's research looks at ideas about waste and in this Essay he considers what the difference might be between hoarding and collecting and between the stuff assembled by these artists and his own father's shelves of matchday programmes. Producer: Luke Mulhall Dr Diarmuid Hester is radical cultural historian of the United States after 1950, and he teaches on sexually dissident literature, art, film, and performance at the University of Cambridge. He has published a critical biography of Dennis Cooper called Wrong and you can find his Essay for Radio 3 about Cooper in the series Books to Make Space For on the Bookshelf and his postcard about Derek Jarman's garden in the Free Thinking archives. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who turn their research into radio. Diarmuid Hester sorts through stuff saved by Francis Bacon, Vivian Maier and his own dad.
	In Praise Of Flatness	20210430		Why are mountains linked with uplifting feelings? Noreen Masud's Essay conjures the vast skies of Norfolk and the fantasy of hope felt by Kazuo Ishiguro's characters in his novel Never Let Me Go, the idea of openness described by Graham Swift in his fenland novel Waterland and the feeling of freedom felt by poet Stevie Smith who declared: 'I like - flatness. It lifts the weight from the nerves and the mind. Producer: Luke Mulhall Dr Noreen Masud teaches literature at Durham University. You can hear her exploring aphorisms in this Sunday Feature https://www.BBC.co.uk/programmes/m000rtxb and debating Dada in this Free Thinking discussion https://www.BBC.co.uk/programmes/m000k9ws She 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 who turn their research into radio. Noreen Masud finds inspiration in fenlands, polished tables and Kazuo Ishiguro's novels.
	Jean Rhys's Dress	20210420		Blousy chrysanthemums pattern the cotton dress, designed for wearing indoors, that a pregnant Sophie Oliver found herself owning. It helped her come to terms with motherhood. In this Essay, the New Generation Thinker reflects upon the daydreams of Jean Rhys, the way she tried to connect with her daughter Maryvonne through clothes and examples from her fiction where fashion allows dissatisfied female characters to express and transform themselves. Producer: Ruth Watts Dr Sophie Oliver lectures in English at the University of Liverpool and curated an exhibition at the British Library in 2016 - Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea and the Making of an Author. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who use their research to make radio programmes. You can find Sophie discussing a novel based on the actress Ingrid Bergman, and the writing of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath in episodes of Free Thinking available on the programme website and BBC Sounds. A pregnant Sophie Oliver found comfort in a floral outfit owned by the Caribbean author.
	The Feurtado's Fire	20210419		Claude Mackay the Haarlem poet wrote about his experiences of an earthquake in Kingston in 1907. Twenty years earlier the city was putting itself back together following a devastating fire set off by a disgruntled employee. New Generation Thinker Christienna Fryar has been reading through diaries and archives and her Essay suggests that there are lessons we can take about the way societies rebuild after disasters. Producer: Luke Mulhall Dr Christienna Fryar is Lecturer in Black British History at Goldsmiths London and convenor of the MA in Black British History, the first taught masters' programme of its kind in the UK. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Council to select ten academics each year to make radio programmes based on their research. You can find a playlist of discussions, documentaries and other Essays featuring New Generation Thinkers on the Free Thinking programme website which include Christienna hosting discussions about women and slavery, and talking with Professor Olivette Otele. Christienna Fryar looks at Caribbean earthquakes and fires and lessons for rebuilding now.
	The Inscrutable Writing Of Sui Sin Far	20210422		Chinatown, New York, in 1890 was described by photo-journalist Jacob Riis as 'disappointing.' He focused only on images of opium dens and gambling and complained about the people living there being 'secretive'. But could withholding your emotions be a deliberate tactic rather than a crass stereotype of inscrutability? Xine Yao has been reading short stories from the collection Mrs. Spring Fragrance, published in 1912 by Sui Sin Far and her Essay looks at what links the Asian American Exclusion Act of 1882, the first American federal law to exclude people on the basis of national or ethnic origin, to writings by the Martinican philosopher ɀdouard Glissant. Producer: Caitlin Benedict. Xine Yao researches early and nineteenth-century American literature and teaches at University College London. She hosts a podcast PhDivas and you can hear her in Free Thinking discussions about Darwin's Descent of Man, Mould-breaking Writing and in a programme with Ian Rankin and Tahmima Anam where she talks about science fiction. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to choose ten academics each year to turn their research into radio programmes. Xine Yao suggests that a poker Chinese face can be a good way of fighting back
01	Food: Are We What We Eat?	20161003		From Spanish Inquisition stews and Reformation sausages to pork in French school dinners, New Generation Thinker Christopher Kissane from the London School of Economics explores the significance of food in past and present conflicts over identity. The Essay is recorded in front of an audience as part of Sound Frontiers: BBC Radio 3 live at Southbank Centre celebrating 7 decades of pioneering music and culture. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Luke Mulhall. Christopher Kissane explores the role of food in past and present conflicts over identity.
01	Rehabilitating The Reverend John Trusler	20180625	20191007 (R3)	Sophie Coulombeau tells the story of John Trusler, an eccentric Anglican minister who was the quintessential 18th-century entrepreneur. He was a prolific author, an innovative publisher, a would-be inventor, and a 'medical gentleman' of dubious qualifications. Dismissed by many as a conman and scoundrel, today, few have heard of the man but his madcap schemes often succeeded, in different forms, a century or two later. In his efforts we can trace the ancestors of the thesaurus, the self-help book, Comic Sans, professional ghostwriting, the Society of Authors, and electrotherapy. New Generation Thinker Sophie Coulombeau argues that telling his story can help us to reinterpret and rehabilitate the very idea of 'failure'. Recorded with an audience at the York Festival of Ideas 2018. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the AHRC to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Jacqueline Smith. Sophie Coulombeau challenges the way we look at failure in the story of a C18 entrepreneur
02	Partitioned Memories	20160927	20161004 (R3) 20170818 (R3)	Memories of Partition explored by New Generation Thinker Anindya Raychaudhuri, from the University of St Andrews. He listens to oral histories and looks at film and literature depicting this key moment in history and the shadows it has cast. He reflects on the way people now frame their own experiences through representations of the mass migration which they have seen in news reels, films and fiction. The Essay was recorded in front of an audience as part of Sound Frontiers: BBC Radio 3 live at Southbank Centre celebrating 7 decades of pioneering music and culture. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio. Applications are now open for the 2018 scheme. Further details and examples of other essays and broadcasts from New Generation Thinkers can be found on the Free Thinking programme website. Anindya Raychaudhuri considers people's memories of India and Pakistan in 1947.
02	The Forgotten German Princess	20180626	20191008 (R3)	The most famous imposter of the seventeenth century - Mary Carleton. John Gallagher, of the University of Leeds, argues that the story of the 'German Princess' raises questions about what evidence we believe and the currency of shame. Her real name was thought to be Mary Moders and she became a media sensation in Restoration London, after her husband's family, greedy for the riches they believed her to be concealing, accused her of bigamy and put her on trial for her life. Her life, and what remains to us of it, forces us to ask hard questions of the sources from her time. Whose word do we trust? Recorded with an audience at the 2018 York Festival of Ideas. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Jacqueline Smith. The tale of Mary Moders, a C17 bigamist and media sensation, is retold by John Gallagher.
03	Sarah Scott And The Dream Of A Female Utopia	20180627	20191009 (R3)	A radical community of women set up in 1760s rural England is explored in an essay from New Generation Thinker Lucy Powell, recorded with an audience at the 2018 York Festival of Ideas. Sarah Scott's first novel, published in 1750, was a conventional French-style romance, the fitting literary expression of a younger daughter of the lesser gentry. One year later, she had scandalously fled her husband's house, and pooled finances and set up home with her life-long partner, Lady Barbara Montagu. Her fourth novel, Millennium Hall, described in practical detail the communal existence of a group of women who had taken refuge in each other's company and created an all-female utopia in rural England. On Lady Bab's death, in 1765, Scott would attempt to create this radical community in actuality. Lucy Powell will explore the life, work, and far-reaching influence of this extraordinary writer. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Jacqueline Smith. Lucy Powell tells the story of a radical community of women set up in 1760s rural England.
03	Telephone Terrors	20160928	20161005 (R3)	In 1912 Freud compared psychoanalysis to using the telephone, an instrument he disliked. Reflecting on this fear of the phone, the poet and New Generation Thinker Sarah Jackson, from Nottingham Trent University, explores the telephone's voices in philosophy and fiction. The Essay is recorded in front of an audience as part of Sound Frontiers: BBC Radio 3 live at Southbank Centre celebrating 7 decades of pioneering music and culture. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Fiona McLean. Poet Sarah Jackson explores the phone and its voices in philosophy and fiction.
04	John Gower, The Forgotten Medieval Poet	20180628	20191010 (R3)	The lawyer turned poet whose response to political upheaval has lessons for our time - explored by New Generation Thinker Seb Falk with an audience at the York Festival of Ideas The 14th century's most eloquent pessimist, John Gower has forever been overshadowed by his funnier friend Chaucer. Yet his trilingual poetry is truly encyclopedic, mixing social commentary, romance and even science. Writing 'somewhat of lust, somewhat of lore', Gower's response to political upheaval was to 'shoot my arrows at the world'. Whether you want to be cured of lovesickness or learn the secrets of alchemy, John Gower has something to tell you. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Jacqueline Smith. Curing lovesickness or learning alchemy's secrets. Seb Falk on Chaucer's friend John Gower
04	Strindberg And 'the Woman Question'	20160929	20161006 (R3)	In October 1884 the playwright August Strindberg took a train from exile to face a charge of blasphemy in court. New Generation Thinker Leah Broad, from the University of Oxford, reflects on 'the woman question' in nineteenth century Scandinavian countries and what their debates have to say to us today. The Essay is recorded in front of an audience as part of Sound Frontiers: BBC Radio 3 live at Southbank Centre celebrating 7 decades of pioneering music and culture. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Torquil MacLeod. Leah Broad considers 'the woman question' in 19th-century Scandinavian countries.
05 LAST	Elizabeth Cady Stanton And Women's Rights	20180629	20191011 (R3)	170 years ago one woman launched the beginning of the modern women's rights movement in America. New Generation Thinker Joanna Cohen of Queen Mary University of London looks back at her story and what lessons it has for politics now. In the small town of Seneca Falls in upstate New York, Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote The Declaration of Sentiments, a manifesto that took one of the nation's most revered founding documents, Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, and turned its condemnation of British tyranny into a blistering attack on the tyranny of American men. But why did Stanton choose to rebrand her claim for rights with the power of sentiment? Recorded with an audience at the York Festival of Ideas. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio programmes. Producer: Jacqueline Smith. Joanna Cohen looks back at the manifesto which remodelled the Declaration of Independence.
05 LAST	The Rise And Fall Of The Hairdresser	20160930	20161007 (R3)	In 1815 an anonymous author published 'Memoirs of an Old Wig' and lamented the influx of French hairdressers to England. From the writings of ETA Hoffmann and Charles Dickens, from Hans Christian Andersen to Balzac and beyond, New Generation Thinker Seကn Williams considers the depiction of hairdressers in prints and prose and what it tells us about a transformative period in British and European history. The Essay is recorded in front of an audience as part of Sound Frontiers: BBC Radio 3 live at Southbank Centre celebrating 7 decades of pioneering music and culture. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Jacqueline Smith. New Generation Thinker Se\u00e1n Williams on the depiction of hairdressers in prints and prose