New Generation Thinkers anointed by BBC

Launched in November 2010 at BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking Festival of Ideas, the scheme selects early career academics who are passionate about communicating their research to a wider audience.

The 10 winners spend a year working with Radio 3 presenters and producers to develop their ideas for broadcast.

They will all take part in Radio 3’s arts and ideas programme, Free Thinking, on successive editions from 28 May, and they will have the opportunity to make short programmes for BBC Arts Online.

New Generation Thinkers from previous years have gone on to become established broadcasters, producing major radio features on everything from the sari to the “Supernatural North”.

Hundreds of applicants put their names forward this time, for projects ranging from the history of tickling to the symbolism of power.

After a six-month selection process that included a series of day-long BBC workshops in Salford and London, the final 10 were chosen by a panel of BBC Radio 3 and BBC Arts producers, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Their names were announced at the Hay Festival on 24 May.

The 2015 New Generation Thinkers, with their institutions and research topics, are:

Catherine Fletcher, University of Sheffield: history in popular culture, at heritage sites, on film and TV, and online

Sam Goodman, Bournemouth University: medicine and British national identity from 1750 to the present day

Daniel Lee, University of Oxford: the experiences of Jews in France and in French North Africa during the Second World War

Peter Mackay, University of St Andrews: transgressive Gaelic poetry over the past 500 years

Joe Moshenska, University of Cambridge: Sir Kenelm Digby, a 17th-century traveller who collected recipes from around the world

Nadine Muller, Liverpool John Moores University: the widow in British literature and culture from the 19th century to the present day

Kylie Murray, University of Oxford: pre-Reformation Scottish literature, books and culture

Sandeep Parmar, University of Liverpool: Modernist women writers

Danielle Thom, Victoria and Albert Museum: connections between sculpture and print culture in 18th-century Britain

Clare Walker Gore, University of Cambridge: disability in Victorian literature

matthew.reisz@tesglobal.com