New Generation Thinkers 2025 selected to shape programming on BBC Radio 4

BBC News

16-06-2025

Six of the UK's most promising early career researchers in the arts and humanities have been chosen as this year's New Generation Thinkers, a scheme supported by the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the BBC. Each year, a nationwide search identifies outstanding academics and helps them bring their research ideas to a broader audience on BBC radio. Selected from hundreds of applicants, these six researchers represent some of the brightest emerging minds in their fields. The New Generation Thinkers will collaborate with four Radio 4 teams across the UK, who work on programmes such as Free Thinking and Thinking Allowed, weekly science programmes, Front Row and Woman's Hour.
The 2025 group of New Generation Thinkers have a wide range of research interests, including: the role which language plays in healthcare; Second World War espionage; evolving perceptions of crime and justice from Medieval times until the present day; how marriage, labour and climate impact migration; and women's contributions to television and film.
Matthew Dodd, Commissioning Editor, Arts, BBC Radio 4, says: "As the biggest speech radio station in the UK, Radio 4 is thrilled to introduce six brilliant early-career academics to such a broad audience. Their commitment to reaching the wider public with their research will enrich Radio 4's programming, delivering new perspectives that inspire and challenge.'
Professor Christopher Smith, AHRC Executive Chair says: 'New Generation Thinkers communicate fascinating ideas to the public, expanding our cultural, social and philosophical horizons while prompting important conversations.
'With subjects as diverse as climate change, war and healthcare, and methodologies as varied as film making and storytelling, these early careers researchers will explore important ideas that have shaped, and continue to shape, our world.
'I look forward to see what these six brilliant, original thinkers can produce with the resources of the BBC at their fingertips.'
About the 2025 cohort
Ashleigh Percival-Borley
Ashleigh Percival-Borley is a British Army veteran of the war in Afghanistan and military historian at Durham University who brings a distinctive perspective to Britain's wartime past. Combining first-hand experience with academic insight, she specialises in the cultural history of the Second World War, with a focus on British secret intelligence and the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Her research explores how wartime espionage has been remembered, represented, and mythologised through personal testimony, film, and popular culture.
Ashleigh has delivered lectures for NATO, spoken at the National Intelligence History Conference, and given a TED Talk on the feminine paradox of being a woman soldier and the emotional legacy of conflict. A skilled communicator, she has already taken part in a Free Thinking discussion in May looking at ideas about peace, which is available on BBC Sounds.
Dr Beth Malory
Dr Beth Malory works closely with healthcare professionals, researchers from different fields, policymakers, and charities to better understand the role language plays in healthcare experiences.
Dr Malory is a lecturer in English Linguistics at University College London (UCL). Her research explores how the language used around reproductive and sexual healthcare shapes people's experiences of diagnosis and public understanding of health conditions. She is particularly interested in how language affects the way people think and feel about pregnancy endings, such as pregnancy loss or termination, and sexually transmitted diseases. Dr Malory works closely with healthcare professionals, researchers from different fields, policymakers, and charities to better understand the role language plays in healthcare experiences.
Whilst completing her PhD at Lancaster University, Dr Malory held research roles and visiting lectureships at several universities, including Lancaster University, the University of Central Lancashire, the University of Manchester, and Liverpool Hope University. Since joining UCL as a lecturer in 2022, she has led a series of projects exploring the role of language in experiences of pregnancy loss, in partnership with national charities, including Tommy's and Sands. She is also involved in large interdisciplinary projects on pandemic preparedness and response.
Dr Laura Minor
Dr Minor is a Lecturer in Television Studies at the University of Salford, UK. Her research primarily focuses on women's contributions to television—both behind the camera and on screen—along with representations of social class in British popular culture. Dr Minor serves as Co-Investigator on the AHRC-funded project What's On? Rethinking Class in the Television Industry, collaborating with industry partners Channel 4 and the BBC.
Edinburgh University Press published her first book, Reclaiming Female Authorship in Contemporary UK Television Comedy, in 2024.
Dr Reetika Revathy Subramanian
Dr Reetika Revathy Subramanian is the creator of Climate Brides, a multimedia project and podcast investigating how climate change is deepening the drivers of child marriage in South Asia.
Why people move, who stays behind, and how marriage, labour, and climate change shape these choices are central questions explored by Dr Subramanian, Senior Research Associate at the School of Global Development, University of East Anglia.
With a background in journalism in India and a PhD in Multidisciplinary Gender Studies from the University of Cambridge, Dr Subramanian works at the intersection of academic research and creative storytelling—drawing on podcasts, comics, and women's work songs to surface grounded, everyday narratives.
Dr Sarah Louise Smyth
Dr Sarah Louise Smyth is currently writing a book about filmmaker, writer, journalist, and playwright Nora Ephron, due to be published by Edinburgh University Press in 2026.
Dr Smyth is a Lecturer in Film in the Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies at the University of Essex. Her research focuses on women's representation and authorship in contemporary film and television. Dr Smyth's Nora Ephron project is part-funded by a BA/Leverhulme Small Grant, awarded for research on Ephron's early screenplays held in the USA. The findings of this research will help write the history of Ephron in Hollywood—one of the most popular and successful women filmmakers of all time.
Dr Smyth completed her PhD in Film at the University of Southampton in 2019, funded by the AHRC project Calling the Shots: Women and Contemporary UK Film Culture. Since then, she has published research on topics such as women's filmmaking in Britain, women's genre filmmaking, and women's television production. In 2024, she co-edited a special dossier on women's television authorship and adaptation for the journal New Review in Film and Television Studies. She currently serves on the Steering Group of the Women's Film and Television History Network UK/Ireland.
Dr Stephanie Brown
Dr Stephanie Brown is a co-creator of Medieval Murder Maps, an interactive website offering unique insights into violence and justice in medieval England. Her upcoming book, Murder and Mercy: Homicide and Capital Punishment in Nineteenth-Century Wales, argues that not everyone had an equal chance of being shown mercy, and will be published by Routledge.
Dr Brown is a historical criminologist at the University of Hull, exploring change and continuity in crime, punishment, and policing from the Middle Ages to the modern day. She is an expert in the law, context, and history of homicide, suicide, and abortion. Her research uncovers how society's views of violence, gender, ethnicity, and class shape who is seen as a 'criminal' and how the law is applied in England and Wales. She also explores contemporary issues, including how the media reports crime and what the public thinks about justice.
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About the New Generation Thinkers scheme
Every year, the BBC and AHRC hold a nationwide search for the best new arts and humanities academics with ideas that will resonate with a wider audience. These New Generation Thinkers represent some of the best early career researchers in the country.
They will benefit from training and development with AHRC. They will also spend a year being mentored by producers from BBC radio, where they will appear and take part in discussions during the year.
The New Generation Thinker scheme has been running since 2011 with over 100 academics having passed through it. New Generation Thinkers alumni include Shahidha Bari, Laurence Scott, Nandini Das, Noreen Masud, Alexandra Harris, Daisy Hay, Islam Issa, Joanne Paul, Jonathan Healey, Oskar Cox Jensen, Tiffany Watt Smith, Daniel Lee, Lucy Weir, Victoria Donovan, Eleanor Barraclough, Jade Cuttle, Ellie Chan, Leah Broad, Diarmuid Hester, Elsa Richardson, Preti Taneja, Christopher Harding, Christina Faraday, Sandeep Parmar, Jake Morris-Campbell and Catherine Fletcher, who have gone on to publish for broad audiences outside of academia. Other alumni who have curated exhibitions, appeared as expert guests on TV or hosted radio broadcasts and podcasts include Fern Riddell, Xine Yao, Sean Williams, Dina Rezk, John Gallagher, Jade Munslow Ong, Joan Passey, Susan Greaney, Naomi Paxton, Sophie Coulombeau, Louise Creechan, Christienna Fryar, Alexandra Reza, Jake Subryan Richards, Danielle Thom, Fariha Shaikh, Will Abberley, Shona Minson, Becca Voelcker, Tom Simpson and Lisa Mullen.