Jonathan Healey named BBC New Generation Thinker

BBC Television Arts and the Arts and Humanities Research Council have named Dr Jonathan Healey, our new University Lecturer in Local and Social History, one of ten academics to have won the title of BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinker 2012.

Producers from Radio 3 searched the UK to find the brightest, early-career academics who have the potential 'to turn their groundbreaking ideas into sensational broadcasting'. The ten winners will make their debut appearance on Radio 3's arts and ideas programme Night Waves (Mondays to Thursdays, 10.00-10.45pm) from Monday 18 June, when they will each present an idea inspired by their research.

Dr Healey's research encompasses several aspects of English social and economic history from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, focusing in particular on the long-term development of the English economy and state, on rural history, and on the history of popular politics. He has published on the development, politics and economic context of the Poor Law, on changing social structures in the Lake District, and on the epidemics of 1727-30.

Dr Healey (pictured below, seated, on the left) replaces Dr Adrienne Rosen as Course Director of the Department's very popular Advanced Diploma in Local History, a one-year, online Oxford award programme. Dr Rosen, who first joined the Department as a tutor in 1992 before becoming a Departmental Lecturer in 2001, is retiring this September and will be much missed.

Read the full story on the BBC website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2012/ngt2012.html.

Published 15 June 2012