Thoughtlines

Thoughtlines
  • 5.0 (1)
  • EDUCATION

Thoughtlines brings you the best academic thinking outside the box from CRASSH at the University of Cambridge. The podcast is presented by Catherine Galloway and produced by Carl Homer at Cambridge TV. A well as Thoughtlines episodes you can enjoy podcast episodes produced by some or our Research Networks and Research Labs. The Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) is an interdisciplinary research centre at the University of Cambridge. Founded in 2001, CRASSH came into being as a way to create interdisciplinary dialogue across the University’s many faculties and departments in the arts, social sciences and humanities, as well as to build bridges with scientific subjects. It has now grown into one of the largest humanities institutes in the world and is a major presence in academic life in the UK. It serves at once to draw together disciplinary perspectives in Cambridge and to disseminate new ideas to audiences across Europe and beyond.

  1. Un/knowing podcast Ep 3: Relating and Remembering as Bodies of Water with Verlyne Nzojibwami

    2D AGO

    Un/knowing podcast Ep 3: Relating and Remembering as Bodies of Water with Verlyne Nzojibwami

    Un/knowing Podcast Episode 3: Relating and remembering as bodies of water with Verlyne Nzojibwami In the third episode of LEAP Lab’s ‘Un/knowing’ podcast, we wade into the waters of human nature with psychologist Verlyne Nzojibwami, currently doing her PhD at the University of Cambridge in the Faculty of Education and Department of Psychiatry. Sitting in her home, we chatted about the challenges of interpersonal relationships and finding inner peace, how water as our shared material essence may connect us to other bodies of water, and even what the spirit of water might remember over many cycles of flowing through different streams of consciousness. Verlyne Nzojibwami is a practicing psychologist, researcher and writer looking at how we navigate challenging differences as they emerge through our relational dynamics. How are conflicting and polarizing differences produced? What does inner peace mean when navigating differences? Her research is informed through living inquiries and then shared via various forms of creative communications including performance writing. In that sense, creating, counselling, researching and living, all work as one and on each other. Related Links Verlyne’s website: www.Verlyne.com LEAP (Living Experiments in Arts-Science Practice to Re-imagine Sustainability) Lab Podcast produced, hosted, recorded, and edited by Kevin Lim (@KevinTPLim)

    37 min
  2. Un/knowing Podcast Episode 2: Soul technologies and prophetic dreams with Akeelah Bertram

    JAN 22

    Un/knowing Podcast Episode 2: Soul technologies and prophetic dreams with Akeelah Bertram

    Akeelah Bertram: soul technologies and prophetic dreams The second episode of LEAP Lab’s 'Un/knowing' podcast was recorded last October at the end of guest Akeelah Bertram’s tenure as the Cavendish Art Science Fellow 2024-25. We had a meandering conversation walking around Girton College, touching on consciousness, water, dreams, and visions… continuing our earlier discussions on the Cambridge Physics department podcast (Ep 38 — link below) into the realm of the unknown and unexplained. Akeelah is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice sits at the intersection of immersive installation, sound, technology, and spiritual inquiry. Through works like the forthcoming 1000 MOONS, she creates experiences that investigate what she terms as ‘Sacred Architecture’—spaces shaped by emotional and spiritual resonance rather than physical structure alone. Central to her practice is Sonic Ceremony, a methodology drawing from congregational vocal traditions that explores how collective sound-making creates containers for witness, transformation, and communal knowing. During her time as the Cavendish Art Science Fellow, Akeelah’s research examined the relationship between digital technologies and ancestral practices of gathering, resonance, and the technologies of the soul—inquiries that continue to inform her writing and installations. Her reflections on these themes can be found at Just a Feeling on Substack, where she explores Sacred Architecture and ways of knowing that resist easy categorisation. Akeelah's links: • Substack: Just a Feeling - https://open.substack.com/pub/akeelahbertram • YouTube: https://youtube.com/@studioakeelahbertram • Website: www.akeelahbertram.com People Doing Physics podcast, Ep 38 “Creativity in science: a conversation with Akeelah Bertram and Kevin Lim”: https://people-doing-physics.captivate.fm/episode/creativity-in-science-a-conversation-with-akeelah-bertram-and-kevin-lim Cavendish Arts Science Fellowship: https://www.cavendish-artscience.org.uk/ CRASSH (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities): https://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/about/ LEAP (Living Experiments in Arts-Science Practice to Re-imagine Sustainability) Lab: https://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/research/research-labs/leap-lab/ Podcast produced, hosted, recorded, and edited by Kevin Lim (@KevinTPLim): https://kevintplim.com

    35 min
  3. Sounding Freedom and Liberation - Episode 1 with Francio Guadeloupe

    JAN 7

    Sounding Freedom and Liberation - Episode 1 with Francio Guadeloupe

    Join us for a conversation with Professor Francio Guadeloupe as he elaborates freedom as a practice that places us in relation to different spheres, including the political and religious, and to all forms of life (not just “those who human”). Drawing on the radical relationality of the Rastafari notion of the “I-and-I”, and reflecting in particular on music in the Caribbean, Francio draws out how music enables a relational and participatory aesthetic that creates moments of freedom and denaturalises categories of race, identity and gender. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share Sounding Freedom and Liberation with your community. Biography Francio Guadeloupe is Professor by special appointment of Public Anthropology of Kingdom Relations at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. His research focus is on the Dutch Caribbean and the Netherlands Antilles, and in particular he is concerned with themes including identity, post-colonialism and social dynamics within kingdom relations. Guadeloupe ’s principal areas of research have been on the manner in which popular understandings of national belonging, cultural diversity, religious identity, and mass media constructions of truth, continue to be impacted by colonial racisms and global capital. Links to accompany the episode Music Bunny Wailer (and the Rastafari notion of the I-and-I) Armagideon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qWRdMr3Oos Respeck Band – Freedom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A7cSGhjoz8 On the idea of mi hendenan in the Dutch Caribbean: Rincon Boysz and Jéon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDyfJ3_OGDU On the Haitian “nèg”, which is a radical resignification leading the term to mean simply “human” (and tied to it in modern form the “kita nago” movement emulating the movement of the cross for peace): Carimi – Kita Nago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0j6LP_5Ieg Midnite, Rastafari Now (and music based on the heart beat): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wyPwbAnTRc Francio’s writing Chanting Down the New Jerusalem: Calypso, Christianity, and Capitalism in the Caribbean (University of California Press, 2009): https://www.ucpress.edu/books/chanting-down-the-new-jerusalem/paper Link to Black man in the Netherlands: An Afro-Antillean Anthropology University press of Mississippi, 2002): https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/B/Black-Man-in-the-Netherlands Francio recommends … Patrick Chamoiseau, The Old Slave and the Mastiff, trans. Linda Coverdale. Dialogue Books, 2018. Podcast hosts Dr Férdia Stone-Davis: www.ferdiastonedavis.com Dr Charissa Granger: https://sta.uwi.edu/fhe/dlcc/dr-charissa-granger Podcast acknowledgements The Sounding Freedom and Liberation music was composed by Samuel J. Wilson. Website: https://www.samueljwilson.com/profile The Sounding Freedom and Liberation logo was designed by Pavlína Kašparová. Website: https://www.creativenun.com/bio The Podcast was recorded at the Media Lab, the West Hub, Cambridge, and was edited by Mike Chivers

    46 min
  4. Sounding Freedom and Liberation - Episode 2 with Berta Joncus

    JAN 7

    Sounding Freedom and Liberation - Episode 2 with Berta Joncus

    In this episode of Sounding Freedom and Liberation we speak to Dr Berta Joncus and learn about Berta’s own personal experience of freedom and liberation through discovery of her own voice as a performer, and how this led to her research career. Berta tells us about eighteenth-century performer-celebrity Kitty Clive, who worked against cultural constraints to exercise musical and social freedom, and recovered her career by turning the “trash-talk” used against her to her own benefit. Learn also about the unknown repertoire of abolition song, a form of activism circulating in polite society of the eighteenth century—particularly among women—that appropriated the narratives of enslaved people and set them musically so as to engage sympathy and ultimately work towards the end of the slave trade. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share Sounding Freedom and Liberation with your community. Biography Dr Berta Joncus is a musicologist, and Research Project Lead at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. Her research focuses in large part on Early Music repertories, including 18-century European opera and vocal music. Berta is an impassioned advocate for lost and marginalised voices, and most recently has been awarded a 24-month Arts and Humanities Research Council Curiosity Grant to lead an interdisciplinary network looking at abolition song and its legacies in Britain between 1787 and 1830. The network works in partnership with the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the British Library, and the Handel Hendrix House. Berta’s writing Kitty Clive, or The Fair Songster, Berta Joncus (Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer 2019): https://boydellandbrewer.com/book/kitty-clive-or-the-fair-songster-9781783273461/ Links to accompany the episode Abolition Song and its Legacies (ASail): https://www.gsmd.ac.uk/abolition-songs-and-its-legacies-asail Project concerts at Handel Hendrix House, London Concert 1, 9th January 2025: Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDKCLSZZPYE Full programme: https://pure.gsmd.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/51740035/9.1.25_concert_prog_corrected.pdf Concert 2, 19th May 2025: Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9y0T3uTL3E Full programme: https://pure.gsmd.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/52014526/19.5.2025_ASaiL_Programme.pdf Concert 3, 8th September 2025: https://youtu.be/9-rqoYJOyhA Full Programme: https://pure.gsmd.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/52014527/ASaiL_8_Sept_2025_Prog.pdf Podcast hosts Dr Férdia Stone-Davis: www.ferdiastonedavis.com Dr Charissa Granger: https://sta.uwi.edu/fhe/dlcc/dr-charissa-granger Podcast acknowledgements The Sounding Freedom and Liberation music was composed by Samuel J. Wilson. Website: https://www.samueljwilson.com/profile The Sounding Freedom and Liberation logo was designed by Pavlína Kašparová. Website: https://www.creativenun.com/bio The Podcast was recorded at the Media Lab, the West Hub, Cambridge, and was edited by Mike Chivers

    1h 25m
  5. Sounding Freedom and Liberation - Episode 3 with Polly Paulusma

    JAN 7

    Sounding Freedom and Liberation - Episode 3 with Polly Paulusma

    Join us for a conversation with Dr Polly Paulusma to hear how her experience as a singer led her to uncover Angela Carter’s deep love of and connection with folk song, one that infuses Carter’s writing. Discover also how this influences Polly’s own creative practice, which moves freely between word and song, and embodies Carter’s “magpie” approach. Listen as Polly tells us how folk song engages with freedom, allowing individuals to take on the personas and experiences of others by adapting stories and lyrics, making them their own, and offering ways of imagining different ways of being and acting. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share Sounding Freedom and Liberation with your community. Biography Polly is both a musician and a scholar. She has been a signed recording artist since 2003. Her albums have achieved international critical acclaim and she has toured the USA, the UK and Europe supporting Bob Dylan, Jamie Cullum, Coldplay and Marianne Faithfull. She continues to record and release records with One Little Independent. Her latest album is called Wildfires. Alongside her music, Polly completed a doctorate at the University of East Anglia and her book, Angela Carter and Folk Music: ‘Invisible Music’, Prose and the Art of Canorography, was published in 2023 by Bloomsbury. Between writing, recording and touring Paulusma teaches songwriting and poetry for Cambridge University and songwriting for the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance, where she is Associate Professor of Song and Literature. She is a Bye-Fellow of Murray Edwards College. Links to accompany the episode Polly’s music Invisible Music (an album which includes music that inspired Angela Carter): https://pollypaulusma.lnk.to/invisiblemusic Wildfires https://pollypaulusma.lnk.to/wildfires Polly’s writing Angela Carter and Folk Music https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/angela-carter-and-folk-music-9781350296299/ Polly recommends … Emily Portman, Hatchling https://emilyportman.bandcamp.com/album/hatchling Emily Portman, The Glamoury https://emilyportman.bandcamp.com/album/the-glamoury Eliza Delf, Into the Wilderness https://elizadelf.com/track/3051798/into-the-wilderness Get Angela Carter community http://getangelacarter.co.uk/ Podcast hosts Dr Férdia Stone-Davis: www.ferdiastonedavis.com Dr Charissa Granger: https://sta.uwi.edu/fhe/dlcc/dr-charissa-granger Podcast acknowledgements The Sounding Freedom and Liberation music was composed by Samuel J. Wilson. Website: https://www.samueljwilson.com/profile The Sounding Freedom and Liberation logo was designed by Pavlína Kašparová. Website: https://www.creativenun.com/bio The Podcast was recorded at the Media Lab, the West Hub, Cambridge, and was edited by Mike Chivers

    1h 13m
  6. Sounding Freedom and Liberation - Episode 4 with Beryl Pong

    JAN 7

    Sounding Freedom and Liberation - Episode 4 with Beryl Pong

    In this episode of Sounding Freedom and Liberation we speak to Dr Beryl Pong and learn about her work, which spans from the inter-war period between the first and second world wars to contemporary warfare and the use of drones. Discover how music and sound are involved in world-making, how atmosphere politics influences the ability to think, act, and be, how everyday soundscapes are transformed by sirens and drones, and how individual and collective freedom is dynamically negotiated under such constraints. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share Sounding Freedom and Liberation with your community. Biography Dr Beryl Pong is an academic and researcher with interdisciplinary interests in modern and contemporary war; aesthetics; philosophies of space and time; and literary, sound, and visual cultures. She is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow hosted by the Centre for the Future of Intelligence and the Institute for Technology and Humanity at the University of Cambridge, where she leads the Centre for Drones and Culture. Beryl’s writing “‘The Zoom of a Hornet’: Virginia Woolf, Aural Biopolitics, and the Phenomenology of an Air Raid”, in Modern Fiction, Disability, and the Hearing Sciences, 95–113, ed. Edward Allen. London: Routledge, 2024. Links to accompany the episode The Blue Skies exhibition at the Imperial War Museum: https://www.iwm.org.uk/events/beware-blue-skies-the-psychology-of-drone-warfare A longer write-up for Beware Blue Skies: https://www.centrefordronesandculture.com/beware-blue-skies Beryl recommends … “Living Under Drones: Death, Injury, and Trauma to Civilians from US Drone Practices in Pakistan”. International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School and Global Justice Clinic at NYU School of Law. 2012: https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Stanford-NYU-LIVING-UNDER-DRONES.pdf Rancière, Jacques. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. London and New York: Continuum, 2004. Podcast hosts Dr Férdia Stone-Davis: www.ferdiastonedavis.com Dr Charissa Granger: https://sta.uwi.edu/fhe/dlcc/dr-charissa-granger Podcast acknowledgements The Sounding Freedom and Liberation music was composed by Samuel J. Wilson. Website: https://www.samueljwilson.com/profile The Sounding Freedom and Liberation logo was designed by Pavlína Kašparová. Website: https://www.creativenun.com/bio The Podcast was recorded at the Media Lab, the West Hub, Cambridge, and was edited by Mike Chivers

    1h 12m
  7. Sounding Freedom and Liberation - Episode 5 with Vanessa Paloma Elbaz

    JAN 7

    Sounding Freedom and Liberation - Episode 5 with Vanessa Paloma Elbaz

    In this episode of Sounding Freedom and Liberation join us for a conversation with Dr Vanessa Paloma Elbaz as we hear about her work in the Sephardi music tradition of the mediterranean diaspora. With a particular focus on women, and women’s role in mediating and subverting traditions, we hear how pockets of freedom are created amidst unfreedom as songs are modified and used to resist constrictions of gender and tradition. Hear also about the complexities of archiving within this space, but also of its significance as it foregrounds voices that are considered unimportant, creating ruptures in larger narratives, and unravelling hierarchies of knowledge. Biography Dr Vanessa Paloma Elbaz is a Senior Research Associate at Peterhouse, the University of Cambridge, and Research Associate on the ERC-funded project Ottoman Auralities and the Eastern Mediterranean: Sound, Media & Power, 1789-1922. In 2012, she founded KHOYA: Jewish Morocco Sound Archive to collect, digitize, classify, and analyse contemporary and historical sound recordings of Moroccan Jews. She has more than twenty academic books, chapters, and journal articles on Jewish music in Morocco, Spain, and the Mediterranean. Links to accompany the episode El PAIPERO (Fray Pedro) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hInE3lxruxE En Kelohenou https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA7jxGdTOX0 Khoya https://yalalla.org.uk/ Ottoman Auralities https://ottomanauralities.com Vanessa’s writing Jewish music in northern Morocco and the building of sonic identity boundaries. The Journal of North African Studies, 2021 27(5), 1027–1059. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13629387.2021.1884855 Imagining a sonic Al-Andalus through sound, bones, and blood: the case of Jewish music in Morocco and Spain. Jewish Culture and History, 2021 22(4), 336–357. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1462169X.2021.1993541?src=recsys#abstract Sephardi Orature and the Myth of Judeo-Spanish Hispanidad, in Oral Literary Worlds: Location, Transmission and Circulation, edited Sara Marzagora and Francesca Orsini, pp. 233–260. Open Book Publishers, 2025. https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0405/chapters/10.11647/obp.0405.08 Vanessa recommends … Gherasim Luca Lettrism/kabbalah https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16ltchO5Vpw Victoria Hanna alef beth/Kabbalah https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl1epz3tSSA Temsamani orchestra https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d32FrfReF6M Bellida Bellida Lala Tamar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrRBccAR1nU&list=RDlrRBccAR1nU&start_radio=1 Podcast hosts Dr Férdia Stone-Davis: www.ferdiastonedavis.com Dr Charissa Granger: https://sta.uwi.edu/fhe/dlcc/dr-charissa-granger Podcast acknowledgements The Sounding Freedom and Liberation music was composed by Samuel J. Wilson. Website: https://www.samueljwilson.com/profile The Sounding Freedom and Liberation logo was designed by Pavlína Kašparová. Website: https://www.creativenun.com/bio The Podcast was recorded at the Media Lab, the West Hub, Cambridge, and was edited by Mike Chivers

    1h 13m
  8. Sounding Freedom and Liberation - Episode 6 withAndrew Bowie

    JAN 7

    Sounding Freedom and Liberation - Episode 6 withAndrew Bowie

    In this episode we speak to Professor Andrew Bowie, who discusses his work at the intersection of philosophy and music, suggesting that both practices “make sense” of things, and that aesthetic experience opens up new ways of relating that extend beyond the simply cognitive. It is within this context that ideas of freedom arise. While resisting a definition of freedom, Andrew is clear that music is not just a metaphor for freedom but is itself a liberatory practice, responding to constraints and working to transcend these. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share Sounding Freedom and Liberation with your community. Biography Andrew Bowie is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and German, Royal Holloway, University of London, and a jazz saxophonist. He has written extensively about the relationship between music and philosophy, showing how they are entangled with each other historically, and how each illuminates the other. Works in this area include Music, Philosophy, and Modernity (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Aesthetic Dimensions of Modern Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2022), alongside numerous articles and chapters, as well as two introductions to German philosophy. Links to accompany the episode This is from the same tour as when I heard alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges live with the Ellington band, which sparked a lifelong obsession with the expressive possibilities of saxophone tone. https://youtu.be/ASdihZyUIy0?si=aoEzyEJ4JO5vPH6D The coda to Bruckner’s 8th Symphony, which I never tire of, since hearing it live with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic in 1976. This excerpted version of the coda gets a clarity many recordings lack. However one thinks about it, this seems to me to show what is meant by musical transcendence. https://youtu.be/uXS-LvrJgdU?si=xmzRgyTYYqLXIThG This is my favourite example of how Louis Armstrong really invented jazz: there is nothing like this in music before Louis started playing in this way. The rather staid accompaniment only serves to highlight how startling his playing was. https://youtu.be/KF7-xh8Ai1c?si=WHZ2_dEamZS_NuZR Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis in an outstanding live performance. It’s works like this that make me resist trying to reduce the great tradition of Western music to issues like colonialism. https://youtu.be/pKPVAyDaFY4?si=vc7eOivnVC9LCV3s This not very well recorded version of Thelonious Monk’s Round Midnight by Charlie Parker, with a completely exceptional piano solo by Bud Powell, was on about the 3rdjazz LP I ever bought, aged 16 in 1968. https://youtu.be/ECLoE-bw3Kw?si=RzMce_K9XMbul9JP Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge. Like the Missa Solemnis, this resists reduction to any of the ways it might be thought about. He said of it that it was ‘“tantôt libre, tantôt recherchée”: the freedom it embodies is expressed so powerfully because it is manifest in relation to music governed by many complex rules. https://youtu.be/EqGKHDjMTiM?si= The conclusion of Mahler’s 2nd Symphony in a remarkable performance under Klaus Tennstedt. At a time when the world is descending into chaos such music offers a form of temporary liberation whose value cannot be underestimated. https://youtu.be/cUccRm0SYaY?si=jVSnbU1Y2KLAB60s Andrew recommends … “The best books to show why so much modern philosophy fails to make real sense of the world”: https://shepherd.com/best-books/why-so-much-modern-philosophy-fails-to-make-real-s Podcast hosts Dr Férdia Stone-Davis: www.ferdiastonedavis.com Dr Charissa Granger: https://sta.uwi.edu/fhe/dlcc/dr-charissa-granger Podcast acknowledgements The Sounding Freedom and Liberation music was composed by Samuel J. Wilson. Website: https://www.samueljwilson.com/profile The Sounding Freedom and Liberation logo was designed by Pavlína Kašparová. Website: https://www.creativenun.com/bio The Podcast was recorded at the Media Lab, the West Hub, Cambridge, and was edited by Mike Chivers

    1h 2m
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About

Thoughtlines brings you the best academic thinking outside the box from CRASSH at the University of Cambridge. The podcast is presented by Catherine Galloway and produced by Carl Homer at Cambridge TV. A well as Thoughtlines episodes you can enjoy podcast episodes produced by some or our Research Networks and Research Labs. The Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) is an interdisciplinary research centre at the University of Cambridge. Founded in 2001, CRASSH came into being as a way to create interdisciplinary dialogue across the University’s many faculties and departments in the arts, social sciences and humanities, as well as to build bridges with scientific subjects. It has now grown into one of the largest humanities institutes in the world and is a major presence in academic life in the UK. It serves at once to draw together disciplinary perspectives in Cambridge and to disseminate new ideas to audiences across Europe and beyond.

Information

  • Creator
    Thoughtlines
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    27
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © All rights reserved
  • Show Website
    Thoughtlines

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