Life and Language Professor Michaela Mahlberg

Today’s world is in much need of change. But what can we do as individuals and as a society? And how can we bring a humanities perspectives to the change that the world needs? Who better to talk to than Lyndsey Stonebridge, author of the book “We are free to change the world”. Lyndsey refers to her book a "critical creative biography of Hannah Arendt". It is very topical in the way it helps us to think about our troubled political times.

Have you given Victorian gothic fiction a try? The Fascination by Essie Fox will certainly be a good one to get you started. It is a novel that takes you to the Victorian country fairgrounds, the glamour of the Drury Lane pantomimes, and a museum in London’s Oxford Street filled with anatomical wonders. It is a story about belonging and finding your family. In this episode, I talk to Essie about her novel, but also about the craft of writing historical fiction, the very practical challenges of navigating the expectations of sales and marketing, and the research that is part of the creative process.  

Essie Fox is a member of the Historical Writers Association,
and The Historical Novelists Association. Her novels have been selected for the UK National Book Awards, the Channel 4 TV Book Club, and The Times newspaper’s
Historical Book Of The Month. Visit Essie’s blog for some fascinating images, too!

Charles Dickens has captured the public imagination like no other. What always fascinates me about him and his work is how fiction and reality intersect. In this episode, I talk to Pete Orford to get his take on the relationship between lived experience and literary examples in the world of Charles Dickens. Pete has recently published the book The Life of the Author: Charles Dickens, which gives us plenty of fascinating examples to talk about.

Pete Orford is the Course Director of the MA in Charles Dickens Studies run by the University of Buckingham and the Charles Dickens Museum in London. He is the author of The Mystery of Edwin Drood: Charles Dickens’ Unfinished Novel & Our Endless Attempts to End It, and the editor of Pictures from Italy for the Oxford Dickens.





 

What makes the First Folio so important and unique? 2023 marks the 400th anniversary of the first published collection of Shakespeare’s
plays. In this episode, I talk to Chris Laoutaris, author of Shakespeare’s Book: The Intertwined Lives Behind the First Folio. Chris gives us fascinating insights into the human story of this book that was produced seven
years after Shakespeare’s death. The story of the people, places, and contexts that were all part of the creation of this work still have their effect on what
Shakespeare means to us today.

Chris Laoutaris is associate professor at The Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham. He is a biographer, historian & a poet. Shakespeare's
Book has been selected as a BBC History Magazine Book of the Year (selected by Tracy Borman). It was also a Financial Times Best Summer Book.

How do you become a successful children’s author? I invited the brilliant Hannah Gold so I could learn
her secret. What I really liked was Hannah’s insights into the value of a holistic career including a range of professions as well as life experience before becoming an award-winning author of fiction for children. In Hannah’s books, friendships between children and animals play an important role. Making these friendships come alive requires descriptions of how people and animals communicate – Hannah
shares some the techniques she has developed to show this kind of communication. In this episode, Hannah tells us about her research into polar bears and her passion for the natural world. She also explains how thinking about the climate crisis is a necessary part of writing a modern day story.

And guess what song Hannah likes to start events with?  Well, I do like Katy Perry, too!

 

Hannah Gold’s first book, The Last Bear – won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize in 2022 and the same year also the Blue Peter Book Award. Her second book The Lost Whale was the Winner of the Edward Stanford Children's Book of the Year 2023.

Can the law be the same if the language is different? I invited Karen McAuliffe, an expert in multilingual law, to shed some light on this question. Different languages represent reality in different ways. This has an impact on the legal system,
too. So how can law be created that will have the same effect across multiple jurisdictions? Especially in the context of the European Court of Justice this is a critical question. Language and storytelling play an important role for law – from the pricing of football jerseys to the UN Declaration of Human Rights.


Karen McAuliffe is Professor of Law and Language at the University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on the relationship between law, language and translation in multilingual legal orders, particularly the European Union. She has run a number of large, funded, research projects in the field of law and language, including the Law and Language at the European Court of Justice project and The EU Case Law Corpus project. You can find out more about Karen’s research on her website: www.karenmcauliffe.com

Here are some links to the things mentioned in this episode:

Jessica Whyte (2014) The Fortunes of Natural Man:
Robinson Crusoe, Political Economy, and the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, Humanity Vol 5(3), p. 301-321

 

Karen McAuliffe (2013), The Limitations of a
Multilingual Legal System, International Journal for the Semiotics of Law
Vol 26(4)

 

Legal Recognition of Sign Languages Project