New thinkers, new thinking
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Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers. Photo © Ö÷²¥´óÐã
ÌýMatthew Dodd, head of speech programmes, explains how Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers were recruited.
Reading 1000 application forms is not everybody’s idea of a fun month. But now I’ve done it I can heartily recommend it. Honestly! Because the quality of the first-ever applications to Radio 3’s New Generation Thinkers scheme was astounding.
New Generation Thinkers (NGT) is a new partnership between Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council which attempts to reach up-and-coming scholars who are hungry to broadcast their research work to a bigger audience. We put out a call for entries last November, our judges spent the Christmas break reducing those 1000 to 57 finalists with great difficulty and we then invited them to come to the Ö÷²¥´óÐã to talk about how big ideas can make great radio – and auditioned them while we were at it.Ìý
Last week we brought the 10 winners together for the first time and started to broadcast their first mini-essays inspired by their work on Night Waves.
I’m delighted that it has raised welcome debate in broadsheets and online about that most unBritish topic: who is an intellectual and had the Ö÷²¥´óÐã chosen the right kind of brain.
However I have to admit now - we weren’t trying to find a new wave of 'public intellectuals'. More modestly we wanted to find charismatic people with ideas that could turn into good programmes. And we did it by methodical selection. 'An X-factor style search' one headline quipped. Actually the process was a bit closer to a very heavyweight episode of The Apprentice with hard-nosed scholars showing off their skills in group activities at the workshops.
The scheme is a partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council who fund much of Britain’s academic work in the arts. Rather inevitably, that has meant that few scientists applied – but then this is only the first year of scheme. And these NGTs are not Radio 3’s definitive choice for anything as grandiose as 'the decade', but just for this year – when they will be followed by the next group selected.
Given the financial challenges facing universities, our workshops showed Britain’s scholars in fighting form. All of the attendees had to be within 8 years of finishing their PhD, or within six years of their first lecturing job – and they ranged from fresh graduate students to professionals coming to academia as a second career. And don’t be fooled by the short titles the winners' work has been given – all of their topics open a fascinating window on to layers of scholarly research.
You’ll now be able to join the New Gen Thinkers on Radio 3 throughout the year. And more widely, we hope, for many years to come. Remember you heard them here first!
The New Generation Thinkers 2011
Alexandra Harris, Department of English, University of Liverpool
A Brief History of Being Cold - Journeys through English art and the elements.
Corin Throsby, University of Cambridge
The History of Fan Mail - A look at how fan letters provide insight not only into how 19th century authors such as Tennyson and Browning were read in their time, but also into the emerging culture of celebrity.
David Petts, Durham University
The Commercialisation of British Archaeology - The story of radical changes in British archaeology over the last 20 years.
Jon Adams, London School of Economics
Rat Cities and the Bee-hive Worlds: Space and Numbers in the Modern City
An examination of how arguments about the effects of crowding on human behaviour have influenced city planners and architects during the 20th century.
Laurence Scott, Kings College London
Desert Space - The image and significance of the desert in modern culture.
Lucy Powell, University College London
Mind Forg'd Manacles - A literary exploration of prisons.
Philip Roscoe, University of St. Andrews
Investigating the Moral Work of Economics in Everyday Settings - How economics affects the moral landscape of internet dating.
Rachel Hewitt, Queen Mary, University of London
Britain in the 1790s: The Age of Despair - An alternative narrative of Romantic-era Britain, told through the projects that failed to succeed.
Shahidha Bari, Queen Mary, University of London
The Arabian Nights - A voyage of discovery around the Arabian Nights, both their interpretation in Western literature, and also the stories themselves and why they tell us about notions of Arab identity.
Zoe Norridge, University of York
The Testimony of Place: Cultural Responses to the Rwandan Genocide - How the memorial landscape and geography of Rwanda have affected writers, directors and journalists seeking to represent the genocide.
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