Free Thinking

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Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with artists and thinkers in debates and interviews.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with leading artists and thinkers in extended interview and debate.

Free Thinking: Introducing New Generation Thinkers 2021

Introducing New Generation Thinkers 2021

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Introducing New Generation Thinkers 2021

Ten researchers look at colonial history, alphabets, punctuation, poetry, art terminology.

Lisa Mullen introduces the academics who will be using their research to make Radio 3 programmes looking at language, cross cultural connections and figures neglected in history.

From clues in paintings to colonial trade to letters sent between Australia and England; the links between a Durham-based poet and India to the female singers and dancers from Latin America who were contemporaries of Picasso and Josephine Baker; the significance of the Cyrillic alphabet in building nations to why we should pay attention to brackets, commas and colons: African film and ideas about empire to depictions of Iran in nineteenth century French literature and art; how activism affects our view of art to law and the transatlantic slave trade: Lisa Mullen talks to the ten academics whose ideas will become programmes for BBC Radio 3 as we introduce the 2021 New Generation Thinkers on the scheme run in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council. 

Dr Julia Hartley, University of Warwick
Dr Florence Hazrat, University of Sheffield
Dr Mirela Ivanova, University of Oxford 
Sarah Jilani, University of Cambridge 
Dr Jake Morris-Campbell, Newcastle University
Adjoa Osei, University of Liverpool  
Dr Jake Subryan Richards, London School of Economics
Dr Fariha Shaikh, University of Birmingham 
Dr Vid Simoniti, University of Liverpool 
Dr Lauren Working, University of Oxford 

Producer: Ruth Watts 
 
You can find a playlist featuring discussions, essays and features made by the hundred New Generation Thinkers over ten years of the scheme on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08zhs35

Image: Bookshelf inside Stockholm Public Library - stock photo
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Free Thinking

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