Women made up 10-15% of the workforce in the early days of the post office. Looking at a series of different records from the 17th century onwards, Sarah Ward Clavier has discovered stories about spying, how pubs, the links between pubs and post offices.

Research suggests that communities with a local newspaper are more likely to vote in local elections. Rachel Matthews, who worked as a journalist in local news before turning to academia, explores the relationship between newspapers, readers, and advertisers across time and asks how the role of the local press is changing in the digital age.

Anna Muggeridge has been looking into the hidden history of women politicians in local politics, in the first half of the twentieth century. This was an age when many important decisions on education and welfare were made at a local level – and where the story of women in local politics became intertwined with arguments around female suffrage.

Producer in Cardiff: Fay Lomas

Presenter Dr Joan Passey teaches English at Bristol University and is a New Generation Thinker working with the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to share research on radio.

Dr Sarah Ward Clavier, from the University of the West of England, researches the expansion and travails of the early Post Office, early modern news and communications, and Wales in the seventeenth century. Her most recent book is Royalism, Religion and Revolution: Wales, 1640-1688.

Dr Rachel Matthews, from Coventry University, researches the impact of local journalism on the people and places to which it relates, both across history and in a contemporary context. She is the author of The History of the Provincial Press in England.

Dr Anna Muggeridge is Lecturer in History at the University of Worcester and is currently researching a history of women in local government in interwar England and Wales. She also researches women’s political activism in the 20th century.

This New Thinking episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast was made in partnership with the AHRC, part of UKRI. You can find more conversations about new research available on the website of Radio 4’s Free Thinking programme and on BBC Sounds