Nostalgia Interviews with Chris Deacy

My guest this week is Canadian author, Nichola Zacher, writer of the adventures of the Marley series of children’s books. The second instalment, ‘Marley the Dreamer’, is newly released and we learn from Nichola how it is a response to her father being diagnosed with dementia. We discover how Nichola’s literary career started. Nichola lives in Ontario but her grandmother was born in Bournemouth, En...

My guest this week is Bob Bowie, Professor of Worldviews Education at Canterbury Christ Church University and Director of the National Institute of Christian Education. We learn that Bob, who lives in West Kent, started out by studying classics and philosophy and went on to train as an RE teacher.  We discuss the question of what RE is, whether people study religion because they are religious, and...

It was a huge pleasure to record my second Nostalgia Interview with Darren Griffin, Professor of Genetics, whom I first met in 2019 (to hear that episode go to Nostalgia Interviews with Chris Deacy / Darren Griffin ). For our catch up interview we talk about the implications of lockdown on his work and how lockdown has enabled Darren and his team to have a productive year, publishing 43 manuscript...

My guest this week is Árni Svanur Daníelsson who is the Head of Communication for the Lutheran World Federation. We learn that Árni used to work in a video rental shop and became acquainted with film history. He went on to study theology at university and was involved in a theology and film group Deus ex Cinema. We talk about the theology and film field and the possibilities that online communicat...

It was a huge pleasure to meet Sr. Rose Pacatte, who is based in Culver City CA, around 9 miles from Hollywood, for my latest Nostalgia Interview. Rose is from San Diego originally and we learn that she planned to be a Sister from a young age. She started the Pauline Center for Media Studies and in the interview Rose talks about how she became a film critic. Faith and film came about at the same t...

My guest this week is Paul Hedges, Associate Professor in Interreligious Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, in Singapore. Paul and I were contemporaries in the University of Wales and we learn about how Lampeter made him the academic and person that he is today. We learn about the days when computers weren’t used for writing essays, when...

My guest this week is Christine Atchison, who lives in the suburbs of Toronto, and recently completed a PhD which explored transcendence in film. Christine talks about how the 1989 Batman film started her interest in this area, as did a conversation in a bar on pluralism in the Patristic period. Christine discusses imposter syndrome and Eliade and talks about why she enjoyed her PhD viva. She stud...

It was such a pleasure for my latest Nostalgia Interview to catch up with Kate Fox – poet, stand up comedian, academic, journalist, broadcaster and ethnographer. Kate talks about her last gig before lockdown, our love of lattes and living by the sea, and her connection with the University of Kent through comedy studies and the Autism and the Arts festivals. We discuss our conference food experienc...

My guest this week is Celia Pontin, who works for the Committees of Advertising Practice, and has done a PhD (I was her supervisor) on video games and theology. Celia talks about how for her a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome an unnecessary obstacle – and that this is the element that makes it fun. She explains how she drew on the religion and film methodology and looked at how the interact...

My guest this week is Adele Reinhartz, Professor in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa. We learn how work in religion and film became an interest of hers and that Adele was active and non-athletic in childhood. She grew up in a secular Jewish household and ended up majoring in Jewish Studies and by default Religious Studies. We discuss whether Judaism is a...

For my 100th Nostalgia Interview, it was a massive pleasure to meet Pete Paphides, a music journalist who has written for Melody Maker, Q and Time Out and has been the chief music critic for The Times. Pete’s memoir Broken Greek , with the wonderful sub-title A Story of Chip Shops and Pop Songs , was Radio 4’s Book of the Week. Pete also went to Lampeter, where he studied Philosophy from 1989-92,...

Anna Neale is my latest Nostalgia Interview guest, and it was a huge pleasure to meet up with Anna who is a music industry professional. Anna is an artist, songwriter, composer, engineer and producer, she has toured the world, and released three albums. Anna has also served on various music industry committees including the Ivors and has been in the music industry for 20 years.  Anna, who is based...

For my latest Nostalgia Interview it was a huge pleasure to meet up with Theo Wildcroft. Theo has undertaken a PhD with the Open University in the area of practice relationships in Yoga and we find out why Theo misses driving time, and will now walk with her greyhound during lockdown. We talk about the importance of having designated work space and we discuss the role of fieldwork in her PhD, whic...

For my latest Nostalgia Interview it was a huge pleasure to meet up via Zoom with Aled Thomas. Aled currently works at the University of Wolverhampton and did his first degree in Religious Studies at Trinity College Carmarthen from 2007-10. We learn how his goal had been to become an RE teacher but that academia called him back. Aled’s research area is the Church of Scientology and we learn how hi...

For this week’s Nostalgia Interview it was fantastic to catch up via Zoom from Abu Dhabi with Christopher Greenfield, one of my best friends from the Bishop of Llandaff Church in Wales High School in Cardiff. Christopher graduated from Cardiff in 1994 with a degree in Astrophysics, taught first aid with St. John Ambulance, became a schoolteacher and was invited to Houston in 1997, where he later b...

It was a huge pleasure for this week’s Nostalgia Interview to meet up via Zoom with Tamar Jeffers McDonald, an expert on Doris Day. Tamar is Reader in Film and Head of the School of Arts at the University of Kent. We learn that she dropped a copy of her book Doris Day Confidential: Hollywood, Sex, and Stardom to Carmel, California, for Doris Day to read and Tamar talks about how a few years ago sh...

It was a delight this week via Zoom to meet John Lyden for my latest Nostalgia Interview. John is Blizek Professor of Religion and Film at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and has been editor of the Journal of Religion and Film since 2011, a field of study which John has been keen to get people to take seriously. We talk about the importance of interdisciplinarity and how his religion and film...

My guest this week is Johanna Stiebert, Professor of Biblical Hebrew at the University of Leeds. The interview took place against the backdrop of Covid 19, and Johanna explains why she has revamped her modules in the light of the events of 2020. The other big event at the time was the US Presidential election, the outcome of which was not known when we recorded the interview, and Johanna talks abo...

My guest this week is Penny Bernard who gets to wallow in heritage and nostalgia as part of her job translating archaeology for school audiences. We discover that one silver lining in what has been a challenging year for everybody is that Penny has been able to follow her dream of going to art college. We also learn about her family Tudor dinner party and how she finds that children are better at...

My guest this week is Stephen Garner who works at Laidlaw College in New Zealand as Academic Dean and Senior Lecturer in Theology. He talks about how the seasons are different between our two countries, and how Christmas, and its attendant nostalgia, fits into this framework. He once celebrated his birthday twice in one year. Stephen works in the areas of technology/new media and bioethics/transhu...

My guest this week is Brendan McSharry, Editor of The Link, who studied History and English at Lampeter from 1968-71. He has received an OBE for services to education and culture in Iraq where he spent four years working for the British Council.  Born in North West London in 1949, Brendan explains why he wanted to study as far away as possible from the city, and he remembers the long train journey...

Angela Puca joins me for this week’s fascinating Nostalgia Interview. Based at Leeds Trinity University, where she is a PhD student, Angela and I talk about how we can no longer have physical conferences during lockdown and why she moved to the UK from Italy in order to do her PhD.  We learn that Angela, who sticks to a daily writing schedule, has her own YouTube channel called Angela’s Symposium...

It was a huge pleasure this week to interview Jessica Frazier from the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. We talk about representing the exotic, teaching religion and Jessica’s fascination with the meaning of life. Jessica was born in Washington D.C. and came to England when a child. Jessica reveals her apprehension of the different seasons, how she fantasized about going to Narnia as a kid, and we...

My guest this week is Leslie de Vries, who is Lecturer in East Asian Traditions at the University of Kent. Born in Antwerp, Belgium, we learn why Les doesn’t really look back to his childhood. He has a sister who was very sporty while his parents lived quite different lives. He explains why he didn’t perceive his family situation as normal. Les’ father was involved in managing bands and football p...

Richard King is Professor Emeritus of Buddhist and Asian Studies at the University of Kent and in this wide ranging interview Rich begins by talking us through the different places where he has worked. He never would have imagined having the career he does as no one in his family had stayed in education beyond the age of 14. We learn that he might have ended up as a road sweeper. His parents were...