60: Jacqui Double
My guest this week is Jacqui Double who works in Student Support in the School of Arts at the University of Kent. Originally from North Wales, Jacqui grew up in the Potteries. Her father was a fireman, we learn that she was an inquisitive child, and her parents were Mormons. She especially remembers buildings from her childhood as well as walking to school from the age of about 5. We learn abou...
1hr 15m Oct 31, 2019
1hr 15m
59: Andy Crome
My guest this week is Andy Crome, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at Manchester Metropolitan University. We learn that Andy grew up in St. Andrews and studied Theology and Ancient History at Lampeter. We talk about dialects, accents and early memories, including about the history of Lampeter and the people who embodied the place and gave it a sense of continuity. We find out about Andy’...
1hr 8m Oct 22, 2019
1hr 8m
58: Martin Bloomfield
My guest this week is Martin Bloomfield (aka ‘Dodgy Shoes’) who is studying towards a PhD in Philosophy at the University of York and who, like me, studied at Lampeter during the 1990s. Martin explains why Lampeter was a ‘collection of caricatures’, and we also find out about the range of schools he attended when he was young. Martin remembers the birth of his younger brother, and Martin reflec...
54m Oct 13, 2019
54m
57: Dawn Llewellyn
My guest this week is Dawn Llewellyn, Senior Lecturer in Christian Studies at the University of Chester, who I first met nearly a decade ago when Dawn had just completed her PhD. We learn that Dawn’s father is a professional golfer and her mother is a retired nurse, and we discuss the vocational dimension to our respective jobs in academia. Dawn talks about the importance in her life of Open Wa...
1hr 8m Oct 04, 2019
1hr 8m
56: Victoria Mullen
My guest this week is Victoria Mullen, a University of Kent alumnus, who works as a school lay chaplain in Nottingham and whom I taught a decade ago. In this really insightful interview Victoria talks about how she went from managing a restaurant in Canterbury to studying Religious Studies and tells us how she ended up at Kent and what it was like to be interviewed by Robin Gill. Victoria was b...
1hr 10m Sep 25, 2019
1hr 10m
55: Sarah Blackman
My guest this week is Sarah Blackman, a University of Kent alumnus, whom I taught a few years ago on the BA Religious Studies programme. Sarah told her mother at the age of five that she wanted to be a primary school teacher, and three decades later she has fulfilled her ambition. She tells us what initially stopped her along the way from realizing her dreams. Sarah is from Ashford and she shar...
1hr 8m Sep 16, 2019
1hr 8m
54: Jeremy Carrette
It was a privilege this week to interview Jeremy Carrette, Dean for Europe and Professor of Philosophy, Religion and Culture at the University of Kent. We learn how Jeremy came to Canterbury because of love and why he had to demote himself in order to work here, as well as about his links to the Huguenots and the improvement in rail services over the years, and we find out what happened when Je...
1hr 4m Sep 07, 2019
1hr 4m
53: Janet Neilson
It was a huge pleasure this week to interview Janet Neilson, former school teacher in Swansea, who talks about her educational background and the differences in career advice given in those days compared to today as well as about her parents’ military experiences during the Second World War and about the days when married women were not allowed to teach. Janet was a junior school teacher who sp...
1hr 20m Aug 29, 2019
1hr 20m
52: Judith Francis
It was an immense privilege this week to interview Judith Francis. Judith was born in Radnorshire in 1935 and we talk about various Church or Sunday School trips she remembers making as a child and about the different modes of communication that existed compared to today. Judith has snapshots of the past and relays some of her childhood memories, including her time as an evacuee during the Seco...
52m Aug 20, 2019
52m
51: Dani Shalet
My guest this week is Dani Shalet, one of my former PhD students at the University of Kent. Dani is originally from Pennsylvania and we find out why she doesn’t consider herself to be culturally American any more. She once wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps and become a lawyer and we find out why her father advised her not to follow that path. We also learn about Dani’s background in ma...
57m Aug 11, 2019
57m
50: Fran Beaton
My guest this week is Fran Beaton, Senior Lecturer in Higher Education, who, like me, has been at the University of Kent since 2004. Fran also studied for her first degree at Kent in the 1970s in Modern Languages, and we talk about the differences between Kent now and then. We learn that Fran was brought up in East Anglia and that there was a strong Welsh dimension to her childhood, also. We ta...
1hr 8m Aug 02, 2019
1hr 8m
49: Peter Stanfield
My guest this week is Peter Stanfield, Professor of Film Studies, at the University of Kent. Peter talks about why coming to work at Kent amounted to a form of renewal after his previous job and we find out about singing cowboys and the relationship between teaching and research. Peter works in American popular cinema from the 1930s through to the 1970s, and we learn why it was that the 50s res...
1hr 26m Jul 24, 2019
1hr 26m
48: Gerard Loughlin
My guest this week is Gerard Loughlin, Professor in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Durham who, like me, has published in the field of theology and film. We also have a shared background in Lampeter where Gerard studied English Literature and Theology in the late 1970s, and we learn who it was that awakened his interest in philosophical theology and literature. We f...
53m Jul 15, 2019
53m
47: Donna Timmiss
My guest this week is Donna Timmiss, a Durham schoolteacher who has followed her dream of going into teaching, and who specialises in looking after disabled children and those within social services. Donna was the first in her family to go to university and in this very candid interview Donna talks about how her parents, who had experience of the care system, valued the importance of education ...
1hr 11m Jul 06, 2019
1hr 11m
46: Douglas Davies
My guest this week is Professor Douglas Davies, Professor in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University. We learn about his Welsh background and how he has been in Durham for a total of 26 years, including the time he was there as a student. This interview takes a different form to most of the others in this podcast series in that it has less of an autobiographical dimension a...
45m Jun 27, 2019
45m
45: Vivian Asimos
My guest this week is Vivian Asimos who recently achieved her PhD on theology and virtual storytelling at Durham, with ‘Slender Man’ as her main case study, and we begin by talking about blurring the line in horror between fiction and reality. Born in Florida, Vivian reveals how she has to give different answers to the question of where she is from as she has been living in Durham for several y...
55m Jun 18, 2019
55m
44: Katy Hanrahan
My guest this week is Katy Hanrahan, who is originally from Teesside, works in special needs education and went to the University of Wales, Lampeter, in the late 1990s to study Religious Studies. We talk about Teesside, growing up against the backdrop of an industrial region whose heritage has now gone, being the first in her family to go to university, and Katy’s keenness from a young age to l...
49m Jun 09, 2019
49m
43: James Newton
My guest this week is James Newton who is a filmmaker and lectures in Film Studies at the University of Kent. We talk about making the transition from being a student to becoming a member of staff and around the pitfalls of meeting students in pubs and the changing culture around drinking beers and coffees, and James explains why pubs are today a gentrified space and an indulgence. Originally f...
1hr 9m May 31, 2019
1hr 9m
42: Michael Hession
My guest this week is Michael Hession, an American lawyer and documentary maker who has recently completed a film about Revd. Brian Hession (no relation) – a cancer patient who fought in the 1940s and 50s against the stigma of illness and who had also been a filmmaker (and whose work I cover in my own Religion and Film teaching and research). Michael tells us how his study of Brian Hession reig...
1hr 10m May 22, 2019
1hr 10m
41: Todd Mei
My guest this week is Todd Mei, Senior Lecturer and Head of Philosophy at the University of Kent. Born in California, in an environment that was a hotbed of Republicanism, Todd tells us about how his main passion when growing up was rock climbing and why Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’ comprised the rebirth of his interest in Philosophy. We learn that Todd has made a film and worked for an insura...
1hr 15m May 13, 2019
1hr 15m
40: Helen Brooks
My guest this week is Helen Brooks from the School of Arts at the University of Kent. Helen is Reader in Drama and a specialist on theatre in the First World War and she tells us how it was the case that her students precipitated this research area and we learn why she prefers to watch rather than read plays. Helen grew up in Kingston, Surrey, and we discover that one of her earliest memories ...
1hr 10m May 04, 2019
1hr 10m
39: Srivas Chennu
My guest this week is Srivas Chennu who is based on the Medway campus of the University of Kent where he works in the School of Computing. Srivas does cross-disciplinary work on consciousness, and in this really insightful interview he talks about how we are today able to ask questions that the ancient Greeks could not. We discuss how his research intersects with my own work in near-death exper...
58m Apr 25, 2019
58m
38: Lawrence Jackson
It was a great pleasure to interview Lawrence Jackson for this week’s Nostalgia Interview. Lawrence is Head of Film Practice in the School of Arts at the University of Kent, and in this wide-ranging interview Lawrence discusses how he came into his profession from the film, radio and TV industry. He has taught screenwriting and Lawrence tells us why he especially relates to the protagonist in t...
1hr Apr 16, 2019
1hr
37: Clive Marsh
My guest this week is Clive Marsh, Head of the Vaughan Centre for Lifelong Learning at the University of Leicester. Clive, who was born into a Liverpudlian working class family, shares his earliest memories, which include playing with bricks on a floor and eating a rotten apple. We talk about how different it was to grow up in a pre-student loan world where we received grants to go to universi...
1hr 3m Apr 07, 2019
1hr 3m
36: Francis Stewart
My guest this week is Francis Stewart, Implicit Religion Research Fellow at Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln. Francis was born just outside Belfast and we learn how she had to leave Northern Ireland in order to study World Religions. She moved to Scarborough where Theology and Religious Studies were taught at different campuses, and we discover the reason why she and her fellow students...
1hr 5m Mar 29, 2019
1hr 5m
35: Jo Pearsall
It was so delightful for this week’s interview to meet Jo Pearsall, Deputy Secretary of Council and the Court at the University of Kent. Jo was a History student at Kent from 1989-92 and in this very sprightly interview she talks about how strange it felt to return after ten years to work in the same place as when she was a student. Originally from Tamworth in Staffordshire, Jo was the first pe...
1hr 12m Mar 20, 2019
1hr 12m
34: Abi Hawkins
It was a pleasure this week to interview Abi Hawkins, Head of Religious Education at Simon Langton Girls' Grammar School in Canterbury. Abi teaches Key Stages 3-5 and she explains that she always wanted to become a teacher and why she especially enjoys teaching subjects she struggled with the most at university, e.g. Philosophy of Language. Abi, who was born in Canterbury and brought up in Whi...
59m Mar 11, 2019
59m
33: Darren Griffin
My guest this week is Darren Griffin, Professor of Genetics and Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of Reproduction at the University of Kent. Darren works in the field of IVF and the human genome as well as, more recently, the genomic structure of dinosaurs. He was born in Aldershot and grew up in Leeds and in this very insightful conversation Darren explains why he was an od...
1hr 2m Mar 02, 2019
1hr 2m
32: April McMahon
Professor April McMahon is the Deputy Vice Chancellor for Education and Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Kent, and it was a great pleasure to meet her for this week’s interview. April was born in Edinburgh while a Beatles concert was taking place nearby and she recounts at the start of our conversation how her father was defined more by his absence than his pre...
53m Feb 21, 2019
53m
31: Jeremy Scott
My guest in this week’s fascinating and very candid interview is Jeremy Scott, Senior Lecturer in English Language and Literature at the University of Kent. Jeremy was born in Brentwood, Essex, and talks about growing up in what was known as the ‘stab’ capital of the Metropolitan area and how Romford has changed in the decades since. We discuss why pubs are an important part of the British lan...
1hr 3m Feb 12, 2019
1hr 3m
30: William Price
This week it is a privilege to interview Canon Dr. William Price who taught me when I was an undergraduate student in the University of Wales in the early 1990s. William Price was born in Colwyn Bay and went to Lampeter in 1970 as a History lecturer, and stayed until 1997. He now lives in Wem, Shropshire. His father was a curate and William read History at Keble College, Oxford. In this hugely...
1hr 15m Feb 03, 2019
1hr 15m
29: Karen Cox
It is my huge pleasure this week to interview Professor Karen Cox, Vice Chancellor of the University of Kent. Karen was born in Pudsey, West Yorkshire, and grew up in the Yorkshire Dales before going to university in London to study Nursing. She talks about her parents’ background, both of whom left school at 16 and were married at 18. Her father experienced redundancy and was involved in Trad...
47m Jan 25, 2019
47m
28: Mark Connelly
Mark Connelly is Professor of Modern British Military History at the University of Kent and in this very candid and wide-ranging interview Mark begins by talking about his family background. He was born to a German mother while his father, who is a London cab driver, is a mixture of Irish and Russian. Mark also talks about how his love of history was precipitated by reading Ladybird History Boo...
1hr 3m Jan 16, 2019
1hr 3m
27: Oliver Double
It was a pleasure this week to interview Olly Double, Reader in Drama and Head of Comedy and Popular Performance at the University of Kent where he has been based since 1999. We talk about how his work in stand up emanates from his time as a Drama student in Exeter. Olly grew up in Lincolnshire where his father was an Education Officer and we learn why as a child Olly was frightened of ‘Scooby...
1hr 34m Jan 07, 2019
1hr 34m
26: Cecilia Sayad
My guest this week is Cecilia Sayad, Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of Kent, where she has been based since 2008 and is presently working on a project on horror and people’s desire to engage with the supernatural. Born in Brazil, Cecilia moved to the US and then grew up in Sao Paulo before returning to the US to undertake a PhD. Cecilia talks about the accidental set of circumstance...
54m Dec 29, 2018
54m
25: Dan & Lavinia Cohn-Sherbok
This week I have interviewed Dan and Lavinia Cohn-Sherbok who were based in Kent from 1975 until 1997 when they moved to Lampeter after Dan was appointed Professor of Judaism. Dan is originally from Denver, and is of Hungarian descent, while Lavinia descends from an established middle class English family whose father was the lawyer of the Church of England. Dan talks about how he found out wh...
1hr 1m Dec 20, 2018
1hr 1m
24: Taylor Weaver
My guest this week is Taylor Weaver. Originally from Texas, Taylor came to Canterbury in 2014 in order to undertake a PhD in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Kent. We learn why Taylor sought from early in his life to conceal his Texan accent and Taylor talks about the culture shock of coming to the UK. Taylor’s parents divorced when he was in kindergarten and he lived w...
1hr 4m Dec 11, 2018
1hr 4m
23: Will Wollen
It was a delight this week to meet Will Wollen, Director of Public Engagement in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Kent. Will is an actor, and teaches actors, and wasn’t planning on being an academic. Will was born in Kent and grew up in Dorset, though his parents spent many years living in Kenya, where his older sisters were born. At University, Will studied French and Philosophy...
1hr 10m Dec 02, 2018
1hr 10m
22: Kyla Greenhorn
It was a pleasure this week to interview Kyla Greenhorn who is studying for a PhD in Religious Studies at the University of Kent. Kyla was born in Kansas and she discusses the reasons why so many American students choose to study in the UK. She decided from a young age that she wanted to move to Europe and now sees the US as a foreign country. She talks about how her family is predominantly Rep...
1hr 5m Nov 23, 2018
1hr 5m
21: Peter Moore
It was a privilege to catch up again with Peter Moore who came to the University of Kent in 1971 and taught Religious Studies over the course of the following 40 years. Peter begins by discussing the composition of the department when he arrived where he was only one of three staff in Religious Studies. We discuss the influence of Ninian Smart and how Peter came to discover Religious Studies th...
1hr 10m Nov 14, 2018
1hr 10m
20: Danny Pegg
My guest this week is the newly ordained Revd. Danny Pegg. Danny shares with us how when he was at University, where he studied Religious Studies and Comparative Literature, he had no faith and theology was, at the time, something of an academic passion. We learn how a sudden experience led Danny towards a belief in God. Danny uses the analogy of fandom and refers to a ‘lightning bolt moment’ t...
48m Nov 05, 2018
48m
19: Angela Voss
It was a great pleasure to meet up again with Angela Voss for this week's Nostalgia Interview. Angela works in the Faculty of Education at Canterbury Christ Church University where she runs the MA programme in Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred. She begins our conversation by talking about how she brings together esoteric wisdom traditions with transformative learning and the new methodological pos...
58m Oct 27, 2018
58m
18: David McNaughton
For my final interview from southern Scotland, it was a pleasure to meet David McNaughton, who was, until recently, Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion at Florida State University. We begin our conversation by discussing the incongruities of celebrating Christmas in Florida and whether and how it might be deemed an inversion of what is natural and right. David grew up in Gateshead a...
1hr 39m Oct 18, 2018
1hr 39m
17: Milja Radovic
It was a pleasure to meet Milja Radovic for my penultimate interview from southern Scotland. Milja is carrying out interdisciplinary research on acts of citizenship in film as well as in film and aesthetics. She was born in Belgrade back when it was the capital of Yugoslavia during the reign of Tito, and we begin our conversation by discussing her experience of sitting on an Ecumenical film jur...
1hr 19m Oct 09, 2018
1hr 19m
16: Kris Jozajtis
In the third of my series of interviews conducted in southern Scotland, it was an absolute delight to catch up with Kris Jozajtis, who teaches Religious, Moral and Philosophical Studies in a secondary school in North Lanarkshire, having previously undertaken a PhD in religion and film at the University of Stirling. We learn why Kris, who grew up in West London in the 1960s to parents who were ...
1hr 20m Sep 30, 2018
1hr 20m
15: Andrew Hass
It was a pleasure to meet Andrew Hass, Reader in Religious Studies at the University of Stirling, on a recent trip to Glasgow. Andrew has been at Stirling since 2003 after undertaking a PhD in Glasgow in the 1990s. Originally from Canada, Andrew discusses the concepts of home and belongingness and how we identify ourselves in a global context (e.g. ‘a citizen of the world’), prompting questions...
1hr 6m Sep 21, 2018
1hr 6m
14: Juliette Jones
My guest this week is Juliette Jones, a freelance writer/journalist, currently based in Glasgow, who studied Religious Studies in the University of Wales in the late 1990s. Juliette was born in Inverness and she talks about the route that took her to Lampeter and the appeal of living and studying in a smaller place. Her earliest memory is from her time in playgroup and she talks about the relat...
1hr 17m Sep 12, 2018
1hr 17m
13: Reshmi Dutta-Flanders
For this week’s interview I had the great pleasure to meet Reshmi Dutta-Flanders, Honorary Research Fellow in English Language & Linguistics at the University of Kent. Reshmi grew up in Calcutta and came to the UK to study English at King’s College, London, in 1989. In this fascinating conversation, Reshmi compares her experiences of previously studying literature in India and how she was able ...
1hr 6m Sep 03, 2018
1hr 6m
12: Valeska Hass
It was a pleasure to meet Valeska Hass who works as a Project Manager in the Business Improvement and Projects Unit at the University of Kent, where she has been for the last two years. She started working in the automotive industry delivering intercultural training for sales teams and we discuss the role and importance of transferable skills. Valeska was born in Germany but grew up in Namibia...
57m Aug 25, 2018
57m
11: Anthony Manning
Anthony Manning is Dean for Internationalisation at the University of Kent, and in this latest interview Anthony talks about his experience of growing up in a large family but a small town on the Isle of Man where his relatives ran a joke shop. We discuss the sense of community, based on old fashioned values, which the shop elicited, and how its recent closure has resulted in a flood of nostalg...
55m Aug 16, 2018
55m