Free Thinking

Hisham Matar last saw his father when he was 19. He talks to Rana Mitter about his attempts to find out what happened to his parent who was last seen in a Libyan jail and he discusses the way his family was caught up in the recent wave of fighting in Libya. 2016 New Generation Thinker Katherine Cooper looks at the writing of Storm Jameson. The design of street furniture in post war Britain is explored by Eleanor Herring. Gideon Rachman and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira discuss the phenomenon of 'easternisation' in an era of Asian dominance.

Hisham Matar's book is called The Return.

Katherine Cooper researches Margaret Storm Jameson's novels of World War Two at Newcastle University.

The New Generation Thinkers prize is an initiative launched by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to find the brightest minds from across the UK who have the potential to transform their research into engaging broadcast programmes. You can hear more about the research topics of all 10 2016 New Generation Thinkers on our website on a programme broadcast on May 31st and available as an arts and ideas podcast and find clips where you can hear their newly commissioned written pieces on a range of subjects.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

Post referendum, Anne McElvoy is joined by Kwasi Kwarteng MP for Spelthorne who made the case for Brexit; Dr Uta Staiger, Deputy Director of the European Institute at University College London; Sunder Katwala, the Director of the Think Tank, Britain Thinks; and, Abigail Green, Professor of European History at the University of Oxford discuss the competing histories behind Britain's decision to leave the European Union.

And we're joined by one of our 2016 New Generation Thinkers, Chris Kissane, who discusses our ideas of citizenship. Plus Dr Matthew Wall from Swansea University shares his research into betting patterns and what they tell us about the referendum.

Chris Kissane researches early modern history, food and history, economic and social history at the London School of Economics.

The New Generation Thinkers prize is an initiative launched by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to find the brightest minds from across the UK who have the potential to transform their research into engaging broadcast programmes. You can hear more about the research topics of all 10 2016 New Generation Thinkers on our website on a programme broadcast on May 31st and available as an arts and ideas podcast and find clips where you can hear their newly commissioned written pieces on a range of subjects.

British TV and film producer Tony Garnett is in conversation with Matthew Sweet about a career which straddles the Wednesday Play and the many films he worked on with Ken Loach for the BBC in the 1960s, including Up The Junction and Cathy Come Home through the late 1990s series This Life to Between the Lines and a forthcoming drama about police infiltration of British activist groups.

Tony Garnett's memoir is called The Day The Music Died.

Producer: Fiona McLean

Anne McElvoy evaluates the first major English edition of short fiction by the great German critic and essayist, Walter Benjamin with the translator and scholar Esther Leslie and the critic, Kevin Jackson.

And as Peter Watkins' critically acclaimed film based on the life of Edvard Munch is re-released New Generation Thinker Leah Broad considers the Norwegian painter's achievement and the art of biography.

Fay Bound Alberti's cultural history of the body completes the programme - why do we talk of the heart as the seat of our emotions and where would you expect to find someone's "mind" ?

This Mortal Coil by Fay Bound Alberti is published by Oxford University Press.

The Storyteller by Walter Benjamin is published by Verso on 23rd June.

Superwoman: Work, Build and Don't Whine is on at GRAD in Little Portland Street in London from 18 June -17 September

Edvard Munch - a 1974 biographical film about the Norwegian Expressionist painter Edvard Munch, written and directed by Peter Watkins, has been re-released on DVD by Eureka.

Leah Broad's research at the University of Oxford is focused on Nordic modernism. She is editor of The Oxford Culture Review and winner of the Observer/Anthony Burgess prize for the best arts journalism essay in 2015 for her reappraisal of the Finnish composer Sibelius.

Producer: Zahid Warley

Philip Dodd debates "Universities - therapy or learning?". New Generation Thinker Dr Seán Williams looks at the history of the university as a space for thought, considering the arguments put forward by Frederick Nietzsche. Dr Seán Williams is at the University of Sheffield's School of Languages and Cultures. He is an expert on German and Comparative Literature and is currently researching a cultural history of hairdressing.

Dr Matt Lodder, Lecturer in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture at the University of Essex and Dr Joanna Williams, education editor of Spiked Online and former Director of the Study for Higher Education at the University of Kent discuss what is happening in academia and what it means.

Dr Shahidha Bari reviews Omer Fast's film of Tom McCarthy's novel Remainder. And Adam Mars Jones joins her to discuss the place for experimentation in the arts today.

Psychoanalyst Darian Leader's new book looks at the culture and psychology of the human hand. He joins Matthew Sweet along with art historian Lisa Le Feuvre, currently curating an exhibition on sculpture and prosthesis at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, and robotics scientist Thrishantha Nanayakkara from King's College London, who works on the problem of engineering a functioning hand from scratch.

'The Anatomical Venus' looks at another point where physiology and art meet, in waxwork anatomical models. The book's author Joanna Ebenstein joins Matthew along with the curator of the Barts Pathology Museum Carla Valentine.

And, one of this year's New Generation Thinkers, Seb Falk, unveils his work on the history of science. Seb Falk is at the University of Cambridge and blogs at http://astrolabesandstuff.blogspot.co.uk/

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio programmes. Find out more from our website and hear them introducing their research in the programme which broadcast on May 31st - available as an arts and ideas podcast.

The Body Extended: Sculpture and Prosthetics runs at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds from 21st July 2016 - 23rd October 2016

Robotics Open Day 2016 runs 11am to 4pm King's College London on Sat 25th June.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Anne McElvoy is joined by curators and artists and an audience at Nottingham Contemporary to discuss the life of an artist today as Tate Modern opens its new wing. Her panel is

Elizabeth Price - winner of the Turner Prize in 2012 and curator of a new touring exhibition

In a Dream You Saw a Way to Survive and You Were Full of Joy curated by Turner Prize-winning artist Elizabeth Price is at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. Presenting a vast repertoire of seminal artworks and historical objects, it explores the psychological and affective power of the horizontal. It runs from June 10th to October 30th and then moves to the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea, and the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea.

Nottingham Contemporary is hosting exhibitions this summer displaying the work of Michael Beutler and Yelena Popova

Tate Modern's new ten-storey Switch House opens 17 June 2016. It gives Tate Modern 60% more space for displays and opens with a focus on the work of Louise Bourgeois in the Artist Rooms. Works by Mark Rothko, Agnes Martin and Henri Matisse join new acquisitions from Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

This year's Royal Academy Summer Exhibition runs from June 13th to August 21st.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

Philip Dodd talks to Emma Cline whose first novel about teenage girls and the Charles Manson cult and our third 2016 New Generation Thinker Louisa Uchum Egbunike marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Efuru by Flora Nwapa - the first novel written by a Nigerian woman to be published. She's joined by editor and critic Ellah Allfrey to look at African writing today. Plus Dark Money - New Yorker writer, Jane Mayer examines how money has changed American politics. And she's joined by Professor Gary Gerstle and Dr James Boys to discuss the tensions between free speech and big donors, populists and libertarians.

Emma Cline's first novel The Girls is out now.

Jane Mayer's book is called Dark Money: How a Secretive Group of Billionaires is trying to buy political control in the US

Louisa Uchum Egbunike is at Manchester Metropolitan University. Louisa co-convenes an annual Igbo conference at SOAS

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio programmes. Find out more from our website and hear them introducing their research in the programme which broadcast on May 31st - available as an arts and ideas podcast.

Producer: Ruth Watts

Artist Dorothy Cross, author Joanna Kavenna, the cosmologist Jo Dunkley and our second 2016 New Generation Thinker historian Edmund Richardson from Durham University join Matthew Sweet for a programme recorded in Oxford exploring mysticism and its role in a timeless search for reality.

Joanna Kavenna's novel A Field Guide to Reality is published at the end of June.

Dorothy Cross is displaying art as part of Mystics and Rationalists - it runs from June 11th to August 7th as part of the Kaleidoscope series celebrating 50 years of Modern Art Oxford.

Edmund Richardson has published Classical Victorians: Scholars, Scoundrels & Generals in Pursuit of Antiquity.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio programmes. Find out more from our website and hear them introducing their research in the programme which broadcast on May 31st - available as an arts and ideas podcast.

Producer: Jacqueline Smith

As two major archaeological exhibitions open in the UK featuring discoveries from underwater excavations off Egypt and Sicily, Rana Mitter hears from historian and archaeologist, Alexandra Sofroniew, exhibition curator of Storms, War and Shipwrecks at Oxford's Ashmolean Museum about a British pioneer of underwater excavations, Honor Frost, and discusses why underwater sites make the difficulties and challenges worthwhile with Damian Robinson, Director of Centre for Maritime Archaeology at Oxford University and contributing archaeologist to the British Museum's Sunken Cities: Egypt's Lost Worlds.

Joining them to discuss the changing story of archaeology itself in this country and abroad, Raimund Karl, Professor of Archaeology and Heritage at Bangor University who has done two continent-wide surveys on the state of the profession in Europe while continuing to dig, study and develop the ever changing story of the Celts, and Susan Greaney, who works for English Heritage presenting interpretations of sites from Stonehenge to Tintagel to the public when she's not digging in Orkney and pursuing her PhD on Neolithic ceremonial complexes.

Storms, War and Shipwrecks: Treasures from the Sicilian Seas is at the Ashmolean Museum 21 June 2016 – 25 September 2016

Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Guests: Alexandra Sofroniew, exhibition curator Storms, War and Shipwrecks, Ashmolean Museum