From a greater focus on Black history and poetry to classics in state school classrooms and an understanding of the history of science - Rana Mitter & guests debate the syllabus. Jade Cuttle is Arts Commissioning Editor at The Times, and a poet who both reviews and writes her own work https://www.jadecuttle.com Sandeep Parmar is Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool and a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. She is hosting an online conversation at the 2020 Ledbury Poetry Festival and since 2017 she has worked on the Ledbury Emerging Poetry Critics which she co-founded with Sarah Howe in 2017. A report into the effects of this scheme shows that it has more than doubled the total number of BAME poetry reviewers writing for national publications in the last two years. You can find more on the Ledbury website about events they are running https://www.poetry-festival.co.uk/
Edith Hall is a Professor in the Classics Department at King's College London http://edithhall.co.uk/ Her latest book A People’s History of Classics co-written with Henry Stead examines the working class experience of classical culture in Britain.
Seb Falk is a historian at the University of Cambridge who previously worked as a teacher. He is a New Generation Thinker and his book about medieval science The Light Ages will be published in September. https://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/directory/dr-sebastian-falk
This conversation is part of a wider BBC Radio project Rethink which is looking at how we might change attitudes and approaches to a wide range of subjects https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08gt1ry
There is a playlist of Free Thinking discussions about maths, economics, sociology, archaeology, Black British history https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90 You can find Claudia Rankine giving the Free Thinking Festival Lecture here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06nbghv
Producer: Torquil MacLeod