From Berlin techno music to the Glasgow ‘rag trade’, divisive dams to fake news - hear the research topics of 10 early career academics introduced by New Generation Thinker Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough at the Free Thinking Festival

New Generation Thinkers is an annual scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 researchers to work on ideas for radio

Dr Jeff Howard - University College London - is investigating how to respond to ‘dangerous speech’, lies and ‘fake news’

Dr Emily Cock - Cardiff University - is exploring changing attitudes towards facial disfigurement, from C17 to now

Dr Ella Parry- Davies -British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama - is researching the home lives of migrant communities of Philippine women in London and Beirut

Dr Brendan McGeever - Lecturer in the Sociology of Racialization and Antisemitism, Birkbeck, University of London - researches the forgotten Russian pogroms of 1919

Dr Tom Smith - Lecturer in German, University of St Andrews - is exploring the emotional experience of techno music in Berlin and beyond

Dr Dina Rezk - Associate Professor in Middle Eastern History, University of Reading - has looked at how Dr Bassem Youssef, ‘Egypt’s Jon Stewart’ shot to fame

Christine Faraday - University of Cambridge - who is looking into the history of the power of human sight

Dr Jade Halbert - University of Huddersfield - rediscovers the post-war ‘rag trade’ in British fashion

Dr Majed Akhter - King's College London - is examining the contentious history of dams built in the 20th century

Susan Greaney - Cardiff University - is unearthing Neolithic humans attitudes to the ground beneath them and the underworld


Producer: Jacqueline Smith.