'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.

'New Generation Thinker 2013' winner Dr Sarah Dillon

Dr Sarah Dillon, of the School of English, has been chosen by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council as one of the New Generation Thinkers 2013. Dr Dillon is one of 10 early career academics chosen from hundreds of applicants, and one of only two from Scotland. The aims of the search was to find the academic broadcasters of the future.

The 10 winners will spend a year working with Radio 3 presenters and producers to develop their research and ideas into broadcasts. They will make their debut appearance on Radio 3's arts and ideas programme, Night Waves, on successive editions beginning Monday 3 June and will be invited to make regular contributions to the network throughout the year. They will deliver talks at Radio 3's annual Free Thinking Festival of Ideas at the Sage, Gateshead in October 2013.  The academics will also have an opportunity to develop their ideas for television, including working with BBC Television Arts to make short taster films to be shown on BBC Arts website.

Sarah’s work looks at the relationship between contemporary literature and science and explores how the reading habits of scientists have influenced the way that they think. [press release]

New Generation Thinkers Essay: The Entrepreneur

Philip Roscoe of the School of Management, a winner of the BBC Radio 3’s New Generation Thinkers, was sole contributor on BBC Radio 3 speaking about the myth of the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur is a cultural figure and policy fix, the trope of the lone hero who conquers the world and saves the economy. Steve Jobs epitomised this figure. But how much can one person do, and does the myth of the entrepreneur have dangerous repercussions for the rest of us? Philip examined the changing role of the entrepreneur, arguing that the myths surrounding these men and women are too simplistic, that thinkers from Tolstoy to Schumpeter to Hayek have long debated the role of the entrepreneur and what society can expect them to achieve. [listen to the 15 minute iPlayer broadcast]