Free Thinking

Viking burials, preserving archaeology in Uganda, the morgues of Paris and New York and the medieval attitude to dying are our topics as Chris Harding hears about new research from archaeologists Marianne Hem Eriksen and Pauline Harding, and historians Cat Byers and Harriet Soper.

Catriona Byers is completing a PhD at King’s College London on the nineteenth-century morgues of Paris and New York

Producer: Robyn Read

The Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens produced around 1,500 artworks, and a new research project explores the Islamic themes in his art. Dr Adam Sammut discusses why the Ottoman Empire’s influence on Rubens has been at the periphery of research, and what it reveals about the early modern understanding of cultural identity. Dr Nil Palabiyik has been researching the artist, musician and linguist Ali Bey who was taken as a war captive from Poland and placed at the palace school in Constantinople. He became a key figure at court, bridging cultural differences between east and west through his collections of Ottoman music and translation of the bible.

Producer: Martha Owen

A 1660s board game made by a Jesuit missionary sent to the Mohawk Valley in North America is the subject of New Generation Thinker Gemma Tidman's essay. This race game, a little like Snakes and Ladders, depicts the path of a Christian life and afterlife. Gemma explores what the game tells us about how powerful people have long turned to play, images, and other persuasive means to secure converts and colonial subjects.

Dr Gemma Tidman is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Queen Mary University London and a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to put research on radio. You can hear more from her in Free Thinking discussions about Game-playing, and Sneezing, smells and noses.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

An ancient Sussex church - home to a medieval anchorite and the cottage where William Blake received the poetic spirit of Milton are two of the places explored in the new book from Alexandra Harris, as she returns to her home country Sussex and consults sources ranging from parish maps, paintings by Constable to records of the fish caught on the River Arun. In her new book Harriet Baker explores the impact of a move away from city life on three twentieth century writers - Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Rosamond Lehmann. Julien Clin talks about his research into place in contemporary London writing and ideas of heimat in the work of Heidegger. Shahidha Bari hosts the conversation.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Rural Hours: The Country Lives of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Rosamond Lehmann by Harriet Baker is published April 2024

The A13 runs from the City of London past Tilbury Docks and the site of the Dagenham Ford factory to Benfleet and the Wat Tyler Country Park. As he travels along it, talking to residents about their ideas of community and change, New Generation Thinker Dan Taylor reflects on the history of the area and different versions of hopes for the future.

Dr Dan Taylor lectures in social and political thought at the Open University and is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the AHRC to share insights from academic research on radio. You can hear him in Free Thinking discussions about Essex, and discussing medieval bestiaries in Beast and Animals. He is also the author of a book Island Story: Journeys Through Unfamiliar Britain.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Whilst water is the most important substance on earth, we take it for granted in our modern lives.

As an archaeologist, Jay Ingate looks at water in the development of urban centres in early Roman Britain. Whilst the Romans sought to channel water for human purposes they also had a respectful relationship to it because of its believed connection to spirits and deities. Their largest sewer was even blessed with the name of a Goddess. Sam Grinsell explores how that connection to nature was lost as European colonialism led to the grand history of dam making and British engineers sought to ensure a pipeline to Egyptian cotton. He explains how this mastery over water continues with the artificially constructed landscapes of the 19th and 20th century North Sea coasts.

How does out detachment from waters’ source diminish our ability to connect what comes out of our taps to the intensifying dangers of droughts and floods resulting from climate change? Might an understanding of its history illuminate and offer solutions to our current dilemmas?

Jay Ingate is Senior Lecturer in Roman and Classical Archaeology at Canterbury Christ Church University and his research focuses on the complex role of water in the development of urban centres in early Roman Britain Sam Grinsell is a Research Fellow at the Bartlett School of Architecture and follows rivers, canals, seas and oceans in the way they shape the spaces in which we live. He is currently working on a three-year project titled ‘Making North Sea coasts in England, Flanders and the Netherlands, c.1800-1950’. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough is a Lecturer in Environmental History at Bath Spa University She’s a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker on the scheme which promotes research on the radio.

This New Thinking episode of the Arts & Ideas podcast was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), part of UKRI. You can find more collected on the Free Thinking programme website of BBC Radio 3 under New Research or if you sign up for the Arts & Ideas podcast you can hear discussions about a range of topics.

Producer: Jayne Egerton

From 1922, between 10-30,000 women and girls are thought to have been incarcerated at the Magdalene laundries which operated in Ireland. New Generation Thinker Louise Brangan has been reading the testimonies of many of the girls who survived these institutions. As the Irish state tries to come to terms with this history, how should it be spoken about? Is a language of legal blame and guilt enough to make sense of this history?

Dr Louise Brangan is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Strathclyde and is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (part of UKRI) to put research on radio. You can find her contributing to Free Thinking discussion episodes looking at Ireland's hidden histories and secret stories

Producer in Salford: Olive Clancy

Canvey Island: cradle of innovation for gas heating and home to music makers Dr Feelgood, who drew inspiration from the Mississippi Delta. New Generation Thinker Sam Johnson-Schlee is an author and geographer based at London South Bank University. His essay remembers the influence of Parker Morris standards on heating in the home, songs written by Wilko Johnson and the impact of central heating on teenage record listening and playing instruments.

Producer: Julian Siddle

You can hear more from Sam in Free Thinking episodes exploring Dust and Sound, Conflict and Central Heating

Looking at the way human and animal bodies were treated in death and used in rituals prompts New Generation Thinker and archaeologist Marianne Hem Eriksen, from the University of Leicester, to ask questions about the way humans, animals and spirit-worlds were understood. Her Essay shares stories from a research project called Body-Politics’: presenting worlds where elite men could shapeshift into animals — and some people’s bones ended up in rubbish pits.

This Essay is part of the BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinkers scheme which puts academic research on radio.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

You can hear Marianne discussing insights from her research in episodes of Free Thinking called The Kitchen and in one broadcasting next week looking at Attitudes towards death.

Two years living at sea taught New Generation Thinker Kerry McInerney values which she wants to apply to the development of AI. Her Essay explores the "sustainable AI" movement and looks at visions of the future in novels including Waste Tide by Chen Qiufan and Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl. Dr McInerney is a Research Associate at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge and a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the AHRC to put academic research on radio.

Producer: Julian Siddle

You can hear more from Kerry in Free Thinking and New Thinking episodes available as Arts & Ideas podcasts called AI, feminism, human/machines and Yellowface, AI and Asian stereotypes