What's the Point?

PhD researcher Ciara Gorman joins Bryony Armstrong to discuss:

• Where the humanities can take you
• The study of languages and how people communicate
• The importance of languages in political, personal and medical settings
• The skills we learn in the humanities classroom
• Why the world fears gender studies
• Paying attention to contemporary culture

Content warning: this episode contains some discussion about violence against women and mental illness.
Credit note: the linguist referenced is Paula Teixeira Moláns who can be found here: https://www.gla.ac.uk/pgrs/paulateixeiramol%C3%A1ns/. As a clarification, in her talk she was discussing Galician, and said that: 'English has a limited vocabulary and relies on a spatial metaphor such as high and low pitch whilst other languages have other strategies. For instance Galician uses son agudo and grave (as in ‘acute’ or ‘pointy’, and ‘heavy’ or ‘serious’ respectively)'.
Artwork: Riduwan Molla https://www.canva.com/p/riduwanmolla/
Music: Madaan Mansij https://www.pond5.com/artist/mansij_tubescreamer
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Social historian Norma Gregory joins Bryony Armstrong to discuss:

• Useful skills and knowledge from an arts and humanities education
• Making recorded history representative of the past
• The importance of accessibility in historical research
• Improving mental health and wellbeing through heritage
• Bringing people together and building communities through heritage
• Creating jobs in heritage work
• Why art, humanities and creativity are essential for life
• Why you can’t memorise your way through an arts or humanities degree

Please sign these petitions:
https://www.change.org/p/no-job-cuts-at-birkbeck-university-of-london
https://www.change.org/p/no-job-cuts-in-english-at-birkbeck-university-of-london
Find out more about the Black Miners Museum: https://blackcoalminers.com/
Find Bryony @BF_Armstrong
Find Norma @normagregoryNNC
Artwork: Riduwan Molla https://www.canva.com/p/riduwanmolla/
Music: Madaan Mansij https://www.pond5.com/artist/mansij_tubescreamer
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Although there has been scientific consensus on the climate crisis for decades, humans have been slow to respond to its urgency. Environmental humanities researcher Conor Brennan joins me to talk about:

• What is environmental humanities?
• How can evironmental humanities help to solve the climate crisis?
• The role of popular culture in communicating the climate crisis
• The problems that arise when we take arts and humanities out of the equations
• How art convinces people to change their behaviour about the climate crisis
• How has the climate crisis affected literature and aesthetic experiments?
• Why climate activism should include humanities teaching in schools/universities

Read "The Humanities in the UK Today" report by the Higher Education Policy Institute
Other sources discussed:

• Edward Said, "Jane Austen and Empire", Culture and Imperialism (1993)
• Richard Powers, The Overstory (2018)
• Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future (2020)
• Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead (2009)

Find Bryony @BF_Armstrong
Find the pod @wtppod_
Find Conor
Artwork: Riduwan Molla https://www.canva.com/p/riduwanmolla/
Music: Madaan Mansij https://www.pond5.com/artist/mansij_tubescreamer
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

We tend to see medicine as a strictly scientific sector, but the arts and humanities are essential when it comes to educating our doctors and caring for patients and the planet. Doctor and Professor of Medical Education Ian Fussell joins me to talk about:

• What is medical humanities
• How and why we can use arts and humanities in medical education
• The links between planetary health, medical health, and social justice
• Why medical and scientific researchers need artists and humanities specialists
• How the humanities helped the medical field during the Covid-19 pandemic
• Medicine as an enabler of the arts and humanities

Find Bryony @BF_Armstrong
Find the pod @wtppod_
Find Ian at the University of Exeter Medical School
Artwork: Riduwan Molla https://www.canva.com/p/riduwanmolla/
Music: Madaan Mansij https://www.pond5.com/artist/mansij_tubescreamer
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Cybersecurity researcher Dr Andrea Zeffiro joins Bryony Armstrong to talk about:

• The role of humanities in addressing technological challenges in data science domains
• Using humanities to solve problems surrounding data breaches
• Considering the human elements of cybersecurity
• Understanding cybersecurity as more than a neutral protection of networks and data
• The problems we will have with cybersecurity if the humanities continue to be devalued and underfunded

The Reconfiguring Participation in Cybersecurity project at the Oxford Internet Institute can be found here.
Find Bryony @BF_Armstrong
Find Andrea here
Artwork: Riduwan Molla https://www.canva.com/p/riduwanmolla/
Music: Madaan Mansij https://www.pond5.com/artist/mansij_tubescreamer
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.