BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) have unveiled the 10 academics who will be turning their research into television and radio programmes on the BBC. The New Generation Thinkers scheme 2016 is a nationwide search for the brightest minds who have the potential to share their cutting edge academic ideas through broadcasting. After a four-month selection process involving a series of day-long workshops at the BBC in Salford and London, the final 10 were chosen by a panel of BBC Radio 3 and BBC Arts producers, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The scheme has been a successful first step for many academics, with previous thinkers going on to appear across television and radio.
Dr Anindya Raychaudhuri is working on the way nostalgia is used by diasporic communities to create imaginary and real homes. He has written about the Spanish Civil War and the India/Pakistan partition and the cultural legacies of these wars. He co-hosts a podcast show, State of the Theory, and explores the issues raised by his research in stand-up comedy.
Dr Victoria Donovan is a cultural historian of Russia whose research explores local identities, heritage politics, and the cultural memory of the Soviet past in twenty-first century Russia. Her new project explores patriotic identity in Putin’s Russia. She is also working on a project that looks at the connections between mining communities in South Wales and Eastern Ukraine.
