In May of 2025, I was honoured to be asked by the British Academy to chair the final panel in their 'Folklore Reimagined' series, 'Lore of the Land'. This panel was titled 'Stories of wetlands, woods and weather'.

How have landscapes been represented and perceived throughout time? What do the stories we tell about our environments reveal about ourselves? And how can our historical relationship with the land help us reconsider our connection to the natural world today? 

The panelists for this discussion were Professor Melanie Giles FBA, British archaeologist specialising in Iron Age Britain; Fiona Stafford FBA, Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford; and Marilina Cesario, Professor in the School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen’s University Belfast.

You can watch the original filmed panel on the British Academy's YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej60YO1_qrI

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