For over 100 years, the Fellowship of the British Academy has brought together the country’s greatest thinkers from across the humanities and social sciences. In this new podcast, current Fellows of the British Academy shine a light on the Fellows of previous generations whose work still shapes how we see the world today. Listen to leading historians, economists, psychologists and political scientists introducing you to the academics that inspired them, revealing their remarkable lives and the enduring influence of their ideas.
'Purity and Danger', a book exploring the concepts of pollution and taboo in societies around the world, made its author Mary Douglas one of Britain’s...
For three decades, David Butler FBA was the BBC’s go-to psephologist, covering every election from 1950 to 1979. Today, that role is filled by his for...
In 1931, the British Academy elected its first female fellow, Beatrice Webb. A sociologist, economist and social reformer, she was one of the four fou...
G.L.S. Shackle FBA spent his career advocating the importance of understanding uncertainty in economics, but his ideas fell out of fashion towards the...
John Golding FBA’s extensive career included writing the definitive book on Cubism and staging landmark exhibitions of Matisse and Picasso, as well as...
What would A.V. Dicey FBA, the leading advocate of the ‘rule of law’ who died in 1922, think about Britain’s current constitutional tangles? In this e...
‘Captain Professor’ Michael Howard FBA is a British Army veteran who was awarded the Military Cross for his service in WWII before he turned to academ...
Elizabeth Anscombe FBA was one of the most important moral philosophers of the 20th century. In this episode, Jane Heal FBA and Dr Rachael Wiseman dis...
Famous for writing some of Edwardian Britain’s most terrifying ghost stories, M.R. James FBA was also a respected paleographer and medievalist scholar...
The publication of his 12-volume 'A Study of History' made Arnold Toynbee one of the most celebrated scholars of the 20th century – he was even featur...