'New Generation Thinker 2016' winners! Dr Victoria Donovan and Anindya Raychaudhuri

Congratulations to Dr Anindya Raychaudhuri, School of English, and Dr Victoria Donovan, School of Modern Languages two early career researchers from St Andrews (out of 10 total!) who have been chosen as New Generation Thinkers 2016!

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.

Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities

The world’s first national graduate school for the arts and humanities launched in Scotland

• £16.8 million funding for collaborative venture to train the next generation of research leaders 
• First cohort of students begin 
• Bespoke research projects sought in partnership with business and industry 
• Competition for 50+ AHRC-funded studentships now open

Doctoral researchers in Scotland are set to benefit from a unique £16.8 million initiative that was launched on 1 October to help train the next generation of professionals working in the arts and humanities.

The Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities (SGSAH), of which St Andrews is pleased to be part, is the world’s first national arts and humanities graduate school, servicing 1,500 arts and humanities PhD students in universities across Scotland. It includes 16 higher education institutions plus a wide range of supporters and partners in the creative, cultural, arts and heritage sectors.

SGSAH has launched a competition to offer 50+ PhD studentships, funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC), at one of eight Scottish Universities, including St Andrews. The AHRC are committed to providing up to 200 studentships over the next 4 years. It is also seeking bids from universities to work with public, private or third sector organisations to design bespoke doctoral research projects. The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) is providing matched funding for these projects.

Professor Dee Heddon, the Dean of the Graduate School and Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Glasgow, which is hosting the new development, said: “We are delighted to welcome our first cohort of students to the Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities. We bring together distinctively diverse provisions, internationally renowned expertise and unique and extensive resources to support the very best doctoral training for our students. Through this they will develop and use their skills, knowledge and experience across a wide range of specialisms to benefit culture, society and the economy in Scotland and beyond.”

Laurence Howells, Chief Executive of the Scottish Funding Council, said: “The establishment of a Graduate School for Arts & Humanities in Scotland is a welcome and highly significant development, not least because it is supported by over 30 organisations from across the country.

“SFC’s investment of £1.8 million will help to give aspiring research leaders opportunities that simply were not there before including the new Applied Research Collaborative Studentships. Crucially, it will help to direct all their talents and potential to the growth of the creative industries within the Scottish economy. I’m delighted to see the first students being welcomed to the Graduate School and I wish them every possible success.”

Professor Rick Rylance, CEO of ARHC, said: “The creation of the Scottish Graduate School for the Arts and Humanities is a fine achievement and creates an exciting and imaginative environment for postgraduate research in Scotland. Through our Doctoral Training Partnership scheme we invited universities to work more closely together, drawing in partner organisations and sharing resources to offer students enhanced doctoral training.

“We are delighted that the AHRC’s funding in Scotland supports this vision. We will follow the progress of this new national Graduate School for the arts and humanities with eager interest.”

Story of world's oldest surviving scientific journals to be told

Dr Aileen Fyfe, an international expert on the history of publishing in the sciences, based in the School of History, will lead a new project to investigate the story of the world’s oldest surviving scientific journal. The Philosophical Transactions has been published by the Royal Society since 1665 and will be celebrating its 350th anniversary in 2015.

The Royal Society’s archives are an unrivalled resource for investigating this long-running journal. Through the history of this world-leading journal, the project will investigate issues, such as the origins of peer review, and the relationship between profitability and the publication of scholarly knowledge, that are at the heart of the knowledge-based economy.

The four-year project has received £790,000 from the Arts & Humanities Research Council.

'New Generation Thinker' winner

Dr Philip Roscoe, of the School of Management, has been chosen by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council as one of the new generation’s thinkers and communicators. Dr Roscoe is one of 10 early career academics chosen from 1,000 applicants in an X-Factor-style talent search that dealt with specialist subjects which ranged from the history of fan mail to the significance of the desert in modern culture. He is looking at how economics shapes the moral landscape in everyday settings, including internet dating, an industry he called "social engineering on a massive scale". All 10 winners can be heard on BBC’s Night Waves and will appear in special New Generation Thinkers debates. [More]