Nostalgia Interviews With Chris Deacy

My guest this week is Sally Bernard who was a schoolteacher for many years, currently living in Deal, Kent. She originally wanted to run an antique shop but her father played a key role in the career route that she followed. Sally talks about her involvement with Sure Start, and why she disagreed with the late Glenys Kinnock on reading by osmosis. We learn why Sally wanted to be a better teacher than the teachers who had taught her, and Sally also reflects on the nature of the teaching experience. She went to the Open University and worked as a community education officer at an aquarium in Bermuda. Sally discusses growing up in Bristol and looking after international friends from various countries in Europe when she was young. Her father had been a medical officer in Belsen and her mother had been a nurse. We talk about the role that technology plays and how she still sends letters and we find out why New Zealand was such a precious place for Sally and her husband Adrian to live, and how it matched their

It was a great pleasure for this week’s Nostalgia Interviews podcast to meet Sally Nicholls who was at Lampeter from 1992-95 where she studied Welsh. Originally from Llantrisant, Sally grew up in the countryside, and she talks about her passion for horse riding, which she even accomplished in India. Sally could have gone to university in Bangor, North Wales, but ended up in Lampeter, a place with which she fell in love. Living in a Welsh speaking community was an extra bonus. We learn that Sally cannot ever remember not speaking Welsh and has been working in the area of Welsh language education since 1996. Sally’s favourite childhood film was The Wizard of Oz and she enjoyed Jason Donovan when she was growing up, and is, to this day, a huge fan of Neil Diamond, whom she has seen perform around the world, including at three venues in America, and nearly saw him in Australia. She has also written to another of her idols, Michael Palin, and we find out why he is the only man who has ever left Sally lost for w

It was a great pleasure for this week’s Nostalgia Interview to meet Safeer Khan. Safeer is Imam at a mosque in Gillingham where he has been based since 2014.  He leads the prayers every day and takes classes at the mosque. We learn about the Indian origins of his Ahmadiyya community which has about 35,000 members in the UK. Safeer talks about misunderstandings around caliphs and the role of the mosque as helper for the wider community and the importance of challenging misconceptions. We discuss Islamophobia, and how Safeer tries to combat that, and Safeer recounts confrontations he has experienced with Britain First. We talk about different ways of dealing with violence and what happens when people are fed hate, and why we should never give up on people. We talk about Israel-Gaza and whether it’s a political or a religious war and Safeer recounts his experience of meeting a former IDF officer on Rochester High Street. We talk about whether the conflict in Israel and Gaza will ever end, and the dangers of f

It was a great pleasure for this week’s Nostalgia Interviews podcast to meet Simon Smith who was at Lampeter from 1988-91, where he studied Religious Studies, and then stayed on for the Interfaith Studies MA. Simon worked in a bank for six years before going to university, and we find out why he chose Lampeter of all places, and he reflects on the shape of the department of Theology and Religious in those days. He talks about how he could never have expected to write an essay on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy before embarking on his course. We talk about the perennial question ‘Are you religious?’ and why it is important to study religion without having to subscribe to a particular tradition. Simon explains why he enjoyed the interactive element of MA teaching, and we learn about his work at the Philosophical and Religious Studies Study Centre in Leeds. Simon was born in Chester, moved to Hull and then near Birmingham, and we talk about Simon’s music interests including the blog he writes. He was ni

My guest this week is Louise Naylor, who spent 34 years at the University of Kent before retiring in September 2023 as Director of Education. Louise started on a one year temporary lectureship in 1989, and we talk about the role of serendipity and opportunity and the recipe for staying the course and how one can never be prepared for everything that arises in a teaching context. The best teaching is when the teacher is continually learning, and we discuss the performance side of education which is two-way. Louise reflects on how people often tell us when we get things wrong but not when we get things right, and how Covid meant that teachers and learners were on a level playing field. Louise talks about the changes she has experienced since was an undergraduate in Aberdeen where she studied biochemistry in an age when it was heavily male-dominated and no one was on first name terms. She was the first in her family to go to university. Louise went to Canada to do her PhD, and turned down Cambridge to go ther

My guest this week is Matt Harrington who studied English at Lampeter from 1991-94. There are many great undergraduate reminisces here, beginning with a recollection of the circumstances around our graduation in July 1994. Matt worked in a bookshop post-Lampeter and then as a junior copywriter, and he talks about how this enabled him to write with economy, and how that played out in his student days when it came to submitting essays. Matt reveals how he managed to avoid reading lots of Victorian novels, and why he gelled with his peers because we were all arts and humanities students (there is a fascinating thread about Informatics being an outlier). We reflect on how a city university wouldn’t have been right for us and we refer to a contemporary of ours, Alexis Athena De Winter, and the way Lampeter was a very accepting environment. Matt talks about being born in London but made in Lampeter, and we discuss the transgressive nature of Lampeter. We talk about the skills developed from our time in universi

My guest this week is James Grindrod who was in Lampeter from 1993-96 where he studied Single Honours History. James talks about the impact of what he did on his life and career, and how learning is not just something that stops when you finish your full time education. We discuss different lenses of looking at the past, including how we might have once thought that things were ‘getting better’, but that the events of the last decade or so might militate against that way of looking at history. James talks about always having been a nostalgic person, and we touch on the relationship between Christmas and nostalgia. We talk about the epidemic of loneliness and how people came together during the time of the Second World War, and we reflect on the role played by diary accounts. We talk about how we live in a world now where every facet of our lives is recorded, no matter how mundane, in contrast to the past, and we focus on the role of ordinary experiences. James was born and grew up in North London, and he

This week’s episode is a Christmas special as I am joined by someone else who has made Christmas their research project in recent years. Lucinda Murphy and I had never met before we recorded this interview in London in October 2023, and there are many parallels and synergies which make this a really compelling discussion around the ‘meaning’ of Christmas. Lucinda began her doctorate at Durham on Christmas in 2016 at just the time that my own Christmas as Religion was published. Lucinda talks about how the impetus for her work was that so little has been written on contemporary views of Christmas and she discusses why people don’t always think it is a subject worthy of study. Lucinda reflects on whether the study of Christmas was going to ruin Christmas for her personally and how it feels to live for so long in such a liminal period of time. She discusses also how Covid impacted on her research vis-à-vis the tropes of celebration and crisis and she talks about the notion of emotional dissonance. Lucinda use

My guest this week is Henry Jeppesen, a freelance literary translator, who studied Single Honours Swedish at Lampeter from 1993-97. We learn about Henry’s Scandinavian background, find out why he fell in love with Lampeter and what happened on his Year Abroad. In his time at university, Henry sat on the Ents Committee and remembers seeing Zodiac Mindwarp and Doctor and the Medics perform – though we learn that he didn’t quite manage to bring Oasis or Blur to Lampeter! We learn about the impact Lampeter had on Henry, including the Students’ Union, and Henry reflects on what it would have been like to be at a different university. Henry talks about learning a language from scratch, what it was like to go to Lampeter from a small town, and growing up in Norfolk. We find out about the gigs Henry went to when young, including Def Leppard and he tells us whether he goes for the artists’ old or new music. Another of his favourite bands is The Manic Street Preachers, and we reflect on the fanzines that existed wh

My guest this week is John Wills, Professor of American Media and Culture, who has been at the University of Kent since 2005. We discover that John owns various consoles and machines from the 1970s onwards and we find out where his academic interests, e.g. in video games, have come from. John talks about how the things he is interested in emanate from his teenage years, as with cataloguing films, and we discuss defining oneself and having an attachment to something, and the way it can lead to academic pursuits. John also worked in a video store when young, he initially started a degree in Architecture, and we discuss how we make sense of our pasts and work things out, finding patterns along the way. John talks about why being a teenager was not always helpful and what he has learned from those days, including depression, and we discuss whether any of this can be talked about with others, e.g. revisiting elements from childhood. He grew up in Leamington Spa in Warwickshire, and his family then moved near B

It was a great pleasure for this week’s Nostalgia Interview to meet Katie Marquis. Katie runs Dance Warehouse, a dance school in Canterbury where she was once a pupil. We find out how Katie has realized the three dreams she set herself as a child, and how she is very focused and determined as a person and we talk about the inevitability of the route she has taken. Katie is originally from Canterbury but her family moved to the Netherlands when she was two. She went to the Royal School of Ballet when she was aged sixteen and later performed with a touring ballet company where she met her husband. When she was growing up, Katie didn’t really have much time for anything outside of school and ballet, but throughout her life has often had the radio on in the background – and we find out what her guilty pleasure is on a Friday night! We talk about the importance of time management and organization, how digital technology has made some facets easier, as well as about the role of fate and destiny and the way we in

My guest this week is Chris Solomon, a Physicist who worked at the University of Kent from 1995 until 2020. He specialized in the area of facial recognition and subsequently started a company called Vision Metric which has been his main focus. We talk about the interdisciplinary nature of research, and what he learned from studying Physics, and how it didn’t directly affect the way he lived his life. Chris was a good footballer as a boy and was into mathematics. He was born on Hayling Island near Portsmouth and grew up around Brighton. We learn about his family background, including having a mother who had a TV career, presenting an afternoon show on Southern TV called House Party, and meeting Anita Roddick. We find out about his interest in Slade and T-Rex in the 1970s and how we consumed music in those days. We learn about Chris’ interest in religion, too, and how he became a seeker. Direct experience is important for him.  Buddhism was his first interest, and we learn about Chris’ fascination with the

My guest this week is Gary Bunt, Professor of Islamic Studies at University of Wales Trinity Saint David. Gary and I made a reverse academic journey as he was an undergraduate student at Kent before moving to Lampeter in later years, whereas I started at Lampeter and moved to Kent. The first half of our conversation relates to a less known aspect of Gary’s life in which he had a radio career in BBC production, including working with Brian Matthew. He met artists like The Specials and John Lydon when they were promoting their records.  Gary also received the tapes from the last interview that John Lennon gave, to Andy Peebles, before he died, and had a week to put together a documentary on Lennon. He also did some archive work on the 60s at the BBC, e.g. finding old session tracks. We learn why Gary left that world behind and became involved with a charity called Radio Lollipop which involved laying on big events. He became more involved in working with the patients, which also signalled a change in directi

It was a huge privilege for my latest Nostalgia Interview to meet Anne Pőnisch and Vicky Tomlinson, daughters of John Roland Lloyd Thomas who was Principal of Saint David’s (University) College for nearly a quarter of a century from 1953 until the mid-1970s. Anne and Vicky remember the days of living behind the College Chapel with its spiders, attics and cellars in an age when students wore academic gowns and had to be back home at around 10pm. They paint a fascinating picture of Lampeter from a different age. We talk about how SDC was not just a theological college, and they remember how students would line up to see their father after supper. Their father enjoyed rugby and cricket and the pastoral side of being Principal was important to him. He did all the admissions work during his time as Principal as well as taking disciplinary measures. They grew up knowing their father was a big fish in a small pond, and remember the diverse range of people they would encounter around the house. We find how things

My guest this week is Kate Heffner who is doing a PhD on women in science fiction fandom in the History Department at the University of Kent. Kate talks about the untraditional nature of her research and reflects on the women who wrote on the ways science and literature could coalesce as well as about the importance of the early printing process. Born and raised in Long Beach, California, Kate then moved to Iowa where she did a degree in English Literature and then undertook a Masters in Library and Information Science. She was a first generation college student and worked as a cleaner at an elementary school. We find out how she ended up going to Liverpool in the UK to give a conference paper and where she was encouraged to do a PhD. Kate talks about her work on community archives and about growing up in a house of poverty where her mother was a survivor of domestic violence. Her mother gave Kate her love for strong women in science fiction, e.g. in the Alien films. She grew up with media including films

In a special edition of my podcast this week, Craig Braddick has interviewed me to talk about growing up in the 1980s with Radio 1 and then with Radio 2 into the 90s and beyond, and how being a contestant on Blockbusters guided me towards my own broadcasting career. I talk about the significance of 1981 – the year I started listening to Radio 1 – and Bucks Fizz winning Eurovision and how, during my schooldays, the charts on a Sunday mattered in the school playground. We also talk about whether the presenters of the day really represented what was going on in the wider world and whether there was a patriarchal streak to broadcasting in that era. I talk about who my favourite presenters were in those days, including the impact of Adrian John who was a presenter in the 1980s who really understood his audience. We talk about my childhood diary entries and what it contains about my radio interests, and how I used to include information about the DJ and the artists who were on Top of the Pops each week. We also

My guest this week is Terry Lindvall, the C.S. Lewis Chair of Communication and Christian Thought at Virginia Wesleyan University. Terry talks about his seminary background, looking at religion and popular culture, and we find out about Terry’s academic history and his work in history, theology and communications. We discuss how both of us have been influenced by H. Richard Niebuhr’s seminal work on Christ and Culture, as well as the role of censorship and why, as Terry attests, the church should be using movies as they employ parables. He talks about the importance of showing film clips to his students, e.g. Pixar films, in terms of disclosing the divine. We also talk about Roger Ebert’s learned film reviewing. Terry discusses how he looks at the role of prayer in film in relation, for example, to the films of Robert Benton, and the spiritual journeys that other filmmakers are on. Terry also reflects on how agents tend to stop people like us from getting through to filmmakers. Terry was born in Basel, Swi

My guest this week is Chris Cotter who lectures for the Open University and has a rich background in podcasts. He co-founded the Religious Studies Project podcast in 2012, and we talk about our thoughts on podcasts and why academics want to discuss their research. Chris comes from near Belfast, where his father is a Church of Ireland minister, and moved to Edinburgh in 2004 initially to do a degree in Physics. He had discovered amateur dramatics at the end of high school and was also involved in a band, performing Shakespeare and other plays and came to the conclusion that a Physics degree was the wrong call. He ended up migrating to Religious Studies. Chris’s area of research is in the critical study of religion, theory and method, and we learn about his interests in New Atheism, non-religion and ethnography. Chris talks about his relatively privileged upbringing, his experience of growing up in Northern Ireland prior to the Good Friday Agreement, and what has, and what hasn’t, changed. He became known as

My guest this week is Krysia Waldock, who is doing a PhD at the University of Kent that straddles various disciplinary areas. Krysia is based in the University’s Tizard Centre and has an undergraduate background in languages. A diagnosis of autism led to Krysia doing a Masters in Autism, which in turn resulted in her doing a doctorate, something she never thought she would do, where she is looking at religion, disability and people who are marginalized. We talk about the barriers, often institutional, that have been set up in terms of disability, and the notion of hermeneutical injustice, and the importance of giving people the requisite tools, towards fostering inclusion and belonging. Krysia discloses her experience of meeting like-minded people at university, and the benefits of telling students about one’s own disability, before moving to a discussion about the nature of education and how it fits with, for example, a grammar school ethos, and the notion of ableism. We talk about Krysia’s own education

It was fantastic to catch up with Steve Jacobs, a retired Senior Lecturer in Media, Religion and Culture at the University of Wolverhampton, for my latest Nostalgia Interview. Steve and I were at Lampeter together from 1991-4 where we both received the same degree classification, and Steve recalls the way in which we received our results. Steve worked in Religious Studies at Wolverhampton initially on a fixed term contract at a time when the subject was not well supported. We learn how he made the shift to Media, and his motivations for doing it, and how doing Chris Arthur’s Religion and the Media course at Lampeter helped him secure the job. He speaks about the importance of Chris Arthur, my own PhD supervisor, who let Steve into the department at Lampeter back in 1991. We learn about Steve’s doctorate in Hindu Reform Movements which he sees now as a training ground – a process rather than a definitive product. Steve reflects on how so much of process has been lost in Higher Education today, and we rumina