Prelims

Half Title

GENDER, SEX AND GOSSIP IN AMBRIDGE

Title Page

GENDER, SEX AND GOSSIP IN AMBRIDGE: WOMEN IN THE ARCHERS

Edited by

DR CARA COURAGE

DR NICOLA HEADLAM

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2019

Copyright © 2019 Emerald Publishing Limited

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78769-948-9 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78769-945-8 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78769-947-2 (Epub)

About the Editors

Dr Cara Courage

Dr Cara Courage is Head of Tate Exchange, UK, the Tate’s platform dedicated to socially engaged art, and an arts, society and place curator, researcher, writer and practitioner. Cara has a 20-year career in the arts, specialising in arts in the public realm and public engagement with the built environment, active across all art forms in this and working as a consultant and project manager for public and private initiatives, as well as having her own placemaking practice. As well as co-editing two volumes of Academic Archers books (2016 & 2017) Cara is author of Arts in Place: The Arts, the Urban and Social Practice (2017) and the co-editor of Creative Placemaking: Research, Theory and Practice (2018).

Dr Nicola Headlam

Dr Nicola Headlam is the Head of the Northern Powerhouse within the Cities and Local Growth Unit and is on secondment from her research fellowship at The University of Oxford. Prior to that she spent several years as the Urban Transformations and Foresight Future of Cities Knowledge Exchange Research Fellow funded by the ESRC. She is primarily interested in knowledge mobilisation for urban transformations. She has worked for 20 years on issues relating to the translation of research into policy and is an adaptable urbanist, media commentator and author. Her expertise is in comparative city governance, economic development, regeneration and urban policy and the networks that enable human flourishing, including the role of public agencies in place, specifically sub-national spatial and urban policy, and the role of leadership and partnerships. Nicola is passionate about the role of universities in public policy and practice and is a founding member of the Urbanista UK network for women involved in positive urban change.

She goes to Ambridge every evening to escape all that.

About the Authors

Hannah Marije Altorf

Hannah Marije Altorf is a Reader in philosophy at St. Mary’s University, Strawberry Hill, London, where she was programme director for eight years. She has written on the philosophical work of Iris Murdoch and on different forms of philosophical dialogue. Together with Mariëtte Willemsen she translated The Sovereignty of Good into Dutch and presented a fictional dialogue between Murdoch, Bayley and two friends at its presentation. She is presently working on a short introduction to Murdoch’s philosophical work.

Elizabeth Campion

Elizabeth has returned to the University of Cambridge to complete an Master of Laws in 2018–2019, having previously worked in two City law firms. She was a proud participant in the 2018 Academic Archers conference.

Charlotte Martin (aka Dr Charlotte Connor)

Charlotte is an actor and research psychologist. She trained and worked as a dancer before attending drama school at The Old Rep, Birmingham. In 1982 she was cast as ‘Susan Carter’ in BBC Radio 4’s The Archers, a character which she plays to the present day. She continues to work in theatre, television, radio and as a voice-over artist, but has also gone on to pursue an academic career, studying psychology at the University of Birmingham and achieving a PhD in 2008, exploring the role of power and expressed emotion in depression in people with auditory hallucinations. Her current academic role is focussed specifically on early identification and intervention in youth mental health, working in collaboration with schools and communities. Recent studies have included improving care pathways for young people with psychosis, and screening for early warning signs of eating disorders in young people in schools. She has published 15 academic papers and regularly presents at academic conferences worldwide. Charlotte is also a keen Tweeter (@ambridgeview) and regularly tweets during the Sunday Archers Omnibus Tweetalong.

Louise Gillies

Louise Gillies is a clinical academic, working as both a social scientist and a genetic counsellor. Her main research areas are family communication (particularly relating to inherited disease), use of genograms to explore family issues and genealogy and family health history. The goings on in The Archers have provided a great source of practise material at both masters counselling level and PhD family studies. The Archers has been in her life for about the same length of time as her current relationship (a couple of decades). Eleven years in, she decided she was too old to have a boyfriend and informed Mr G that they were going to get married the following year. He didn’t say no, which obviously meant yes (this has been a subject of much debate since the wedding). She hopes that Fallon and Harrison (at the time of writing) have a boringly normal (and happy) marriage.

Carolynne Henshaw

Carolynne Henshaw is most decidedly not an academic, but is a long-time nightly listener of The Archers. She has worked for a UK pregnancy services provider and a charity offering support to women faced with abnormal pregnancy screening results. She is pro-choice.

Katharine Hoskyn

Katharine Hoskyn spent her childhood and part of her adult life in Britain and now lives in New Zealand. She is currently teaching on contract with the Auckland University of Technology, after teaching marketing and advertising for 20 years and supervising students on work placement. She has an undergraduate degree in social sciences, a graduate diploma in business and an MPhil on the use of sports events to encourage sport participation. Her doctoral research investigates the membership of community sports clubs. Her current research blends social science and marketing, with a focus on community issues. She has been listening to The Archers on and off since 1968.

Madeleine Lefebvre

Madeleine Lefebvre is Chief Librarian of Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. Born in the UK, she holds an MA from Edinburgh University as well as MA and MLS degrees from the University of Alberta. She is a Fellow of the UK Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals and an Associate of the Australian Library and Information Association. Her book, The Romance of Libraries, was published by Scarecrow Press in 2005. In 2015 Madeleine was appointed a trustee of the Niagara-on-the-Lake Public Library and is passionate about the role public libraries play in the community.

Sarah Kate Merry

Dr Sarah Kate Merry is a knitter, a Radio 4 addict, and a Research Associate in the Centre for Postdigital Cultures at Coventry University. Her PhD is in information studies and her personal research interests include how the Internet has changed friendship and the value of non-participatory membership of online communities. However, her actual work involves research into improving support for students with disabilities in Latin America and North Africa, open education in the Middle East and the benefits of board games for people who are socially isolated. Sarah was indoctrinated into The Archers at an early age and despite several attempts has never quite managed to leave.

Claire Mortimer

Claire Mortimer is a film historian, writer and teacher. She completed her PhD in 2017 at the University of East Anglia, her research being concerned with ageing women and British film comedy. She has published and presented at conferences on a range of ageing women, including Margaret Rutherford and Peggy Mount.

William Pitt

William ‘Bill’ Pitt is a social researcher based in a world leading research agency in London. He works across a range of policy areas and has an interest in gender and sexuality. He's a mixed methods practitioner who is passionate about data agnostic research and using evidence to advocate for social change. An avid fan of The Archers, Bill has listened daily for (almost) a third of his life. He holds a BA in anthropology and psychology from the University of Sydney, Australia, and an advanced certificate in market and social research practice from the Market Research Society in London.

Jane Turner

Associate Professor Jane Turner works in the School of Education at the University of Hertfordshire. She is a primary teacher educator, author and consultant, and director of the national Primary Science Quality Mark. As a newly qualified teacher in 1986, she was introduced by a colleague to the delights of the Sunday morning omnibus.

Clare Warren

Clare Warren has worked as a primary school teacher, teacher educator and education consultant. She is studying for a PhD in primary science education at the University of Hertfordshire. Clare became familiar with The Archers as a child when every Sunday morning the kitchen was filled with the smell of baking and the sounds of Ambridge.

Rebecca Wood

Rebecca is an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at King’s College, London, and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. She is a former languages teacher who subsequently specialised in autism education. Rebecca completed her PhD at the Autism Centre for Education and Research at the University of Birmingham where she was supported by a full-time scholarship. She was also project manager of the Transform Autism Education project, a tri-national scheme funded by the European Commission. Rebecca has a particular interest in language and communication and has applied some of the ideas from this area of study to The Archers, of which she is a devoted listener.

Acknowledgements

With thanks for all of our contributors, our community of Academic Archers, the team at Emerald and Oxford Publicity Partnership, and to the people of Ambridge, the women in particular, for proving year on year to be such a fascinating subject of study.