Guest on BBC Radio 4’s The Archers podcast
An enjoyable break from the day job today - I joined Emma Freud and BBC's The Archers podcast with Jan Ravens and Helen Longworth (Hannah) to discuss Academic Archers, a conference series and community I co-founded (with Nicola Headlam) that examines the world's longest-running radio drama through academic perspectives.
The project has grown from an initial conversation about bringing academic analysis to Ambridge into a established conference and book series that draws scholars from across disciplines. It's been fascinating to see how a radio soap opera has generated such rich academic discourse over the years, from agricultural policy to social mobility, cultural change to linguistic analysis.
Today's podcast discussion with Emma, Jan and Helen covered both current Ambridge events and the broader academic framework we've developed for analysing the programme - a reminder that academic insight can be found in unexpected places.