Academic Archers

Welcome to the sixth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2025 conference. This episode brings listeners into the creative heart of The Archers , with a rare opportunity to hear directly from the people who write Ambridge into being. LoxFest Meets the Pyramid Stage Headliners – Making The Archers at the BBC Scriptwriters in Conversation with Al...

Welcome to the sixth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2025 conference. This episode takes us behind the scenes of The Archers , exploring how the programme is made and the people who keep Ambridge on air week after week. LoxFest Meets the Pyramid Stage Headliners – Making The Archers at the BBC Co-ordinating The Archers Julie Sadler In this...

Welcome to the sixth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2025 conference. This episode explores family life in Ambridge through questions of choice, justice, and intergenerational care. Across three papers, speakers examine voluntary childlessness, crime and redemption, and the varied roles grandfathers play in shaping family dynamics. Please...

Welcome to the sixth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2025 conference. This episode explores institutions in Ambridge as sites of power, care, and controversy. Through two papers, speakers examine Underwoods as a space of women’s social change and Lower Loxley as a flashpoint for debates about history, race, and responsibility. Institutions...

Welcome to the sixth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2025 conference. This episode brings together the Saturday morning sessions exploring climate, infrastructure, and risk in rural life. Across four papers, speakers consider how Ambridge understands climate change, measures carbon, adapts to new technologies, and navigates everyday danger...

Welcome to the fifth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2024 conference. Please note: since this recording, one of the speakers, Emily Baker, has sadly passed away. Emily was a cherished member of the Academic Archers community: generous, witty, and intellectually sharp. Her contributions across many conferences and conversations enriched us...

Welcome to the fifth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2024 conference. Please note: the sound quality on this recording is not as clear as usual. We apologise for this and thank you for your understanding. This episode tells the story of Barwick Green , from obscurity to becoming the alternative national anthem. From Obscurity to Alternativ...

Welcome to the fifth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2024 conference. Please note: the sound quality on this recording is not as clear as usual. We apologise for this and thank you for your understanding. This episode explores what it means to live in a neurodiverse household, and why accurate representation of neurodiversity in The Archer...

Welcome to the fifth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2024 conference. Please note: the sound quality on this recording is not as clear as usual. We apologise for this and thank you for your understanding. This episode continues an intergenerational exploration of the Aldridge family, turning the focus to Kate Madikane. It is not in the sta...

Welcome to the fifth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2024 conference. Please note: the sound quality on this recording is not as clear as usual. We apologise for this and thank you for your understanding. This episode examines how class operates in The Archers and whether it mirrors wider English society. I look down on him – From Lord Net...

Welcome to the fifth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2024 conference. Please note: the sound quality on this recording is not as clear as usual. We apologise for this and thank you for your understanding. This episode considers what further education might mean for Emma Grundy and how her story reflects wider trends in UK higher education....

Welcome to the fifth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2024 conference. Please note: the sound quality on this recording is not as clear as usual. We apologise for this and thank you for your understanding. This episode explores how privilege endures across generations in Ambridge and what that means for social mobility. The Glass Floor in A...

Welcome to the fifth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2024 conference. Please note: the sound quality on this recording is not as clear as usual. We apologise for this and thank you for your understanding. This episode explores fandom theory, participatory culture, and how these ideas came alive at the Academic Archers Dum Tee Dum Mash Up w...

Welcome to the fifth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2024 conference. This episode explores how we imagine Ambridge – or don’t – depending on the way our minds work. The Ambridge in My Mind’s Eye - Carolyn Cooper Not all Archers listeners experience the drama in the same way. Around 3% of the population are aphantasic, meaning they lack a...

Welcome to the fifth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2024 conference. This episode brings together three papers exploring money, hospitality and public health in Ambridge. Looking After the Penny Hassets So the Pounds Look After Themselves - Katherine Jennings and Vikki Barry Brown Money is everywhere in Ambridge, but rarely spoken of open...

Welcome to the fifth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2024 conference. This episode brings together four papers from the session The Ambridge Family , exploring queerness, grief, education, and money in village life. The Only Gay in the Village? Queer(y)ing Family in Rural Borsetshire - Peter Matthews The Archers has long been rooted in the...

Welcome to the fifth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2024 conference. This episode takes us into the heart of the home, as Jill Manasseh explores kitchens in Ambridge and beyond. Happiness is the Perfect Kitchen - Jill Manasseh What makes the perfect kitchen? This paper considers how kitchens are designed, lived in, and regretted. Using a...

Welcome to the fifth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2024 conference. This episode revisits the question of truth, lies and deception in Ambridge, asking whether the village is still a moral quagmire. “A Lying, Cheating, Chancer”: Truth and Deception in Ambridge - Ruth Heilbronn and Rosalind Janssen George Grundy was recently branded “a ly...

Welcome to the fifth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2024 conference. This episode looks at the connections between nature, gardening, and wellbeing, through research and the experiences of Ambridge residents. “If listening to the birds for five minutes makes you feel better, good for you”: Wellbeing, Gardens and Environmental Activity - C...

Welcome to the fifth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2024 conference. This episode examines the many ways animals shape life in Ambridge and what their stories reveal about both farming practice and human relationships. “It’s a ferret ferris wheel!”: Depictions of Human–Animal Interactions and Animal Welfare in The Archers - Tamzin Furtado...

Welcome to the fifth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2024 conference. This episode takes a lighthearted but well-informed look at funeral directing in Ambridge, using real-world research and practice as its frame. Funeral Directing in the UK through an Ambridge Lens - Abi Pattenden What might funeral provision look like in Ambridge? This p...

Welcome to the fifth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2024 conference. This episode takes us beyond Ambridge, exploring the imagined history and real-world potential of the Felpersham Canal. The Felpersham Canal: An Asset Beyond Ambridge - Paul Rodgers For almost a decade in the author’s imagination, the Felpersham Canal has taken shape as...

Welcome to the fifth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2024 conference. This episode features a single paper that explores how Aristotle and Greek tragedy continue to shape the drama of Ambridge. Aristotle’s Poetics fuel Ambridge Drama - Sally Knights This paper demonstrates how The Archers has roots in Greek tragedy, and how knowledge of an...

Welcome to the fifth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2024 conference. This episode shares the three papers from the session The Men of Ambridge , exploring fathers and sons, brothers, and shifting ideas of masculinity in the village. He’s his father’s son – in word or deed? - Katharine Hoskyn & Deborah Miller “Every father should remem...

Crowd-sourcing material culture: A History of Ambridge in 100 Objects Felicity Macdonald-Smith The term ‘material culture’ was probably first used by Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers in 1875, when he defined it as ‘the outward signs and symbols of particular ideas of the mind’. Pitt-Rivers donated his collection of ethnographic and archaeological objects to found the Pitt-Rivers’ Museum in Oxfo...