Thinking Allowed

<p>What does an 18-month study of residents on a housing estate in southern England tell us about living with debt? Laurie Taylor talks to Ryan Davey from Cardiff University about his new book The Personal Life of Debt...

<p>What can the worlds of mountaineering and endurance running reveal about changing ideas of freedom, identity and the body? Laurie Taylor talks to Sarah Lonsdale, Senior Lecturer in Journalism at City, University of...

<p>What explains the apparent decline of grand theory in sociology, and what does this shift mean for the discipline today? Laurie Taylor asks whether sociologists are now less inclined to engage with large, overarching...

<p>What do we learn when a city’s future is defined not by rapid change, but by who leaves and who stays? Laurie Taylor looks at two neighbourhoods in different countries, during different periods in history and...

<p>The winner of the British Society of Criminology Book Award in 2025 was Kate Herrity. Her study looks at the way our different senses contribute to the experience of prison life and is called Sound, Order and...

<p>How does the environment we move through shape the way we see and experience the world? </p><p>Laurie Taylor talks to Alex Prior (London South Bank University) about his research inside Westminster, where he walked...

<p>How did the arrival of colour and film technology transform cinema and its cultural politics? Laurie Taylor explores the intertwined histories of technology, aesthetics, and identity.</p><p>Swarnavel Eswaran...

<p>DOGS – Laurie Taylor explores the making of the modern companion animal, from working animals to pampered pets. Chris Pearson, Professor of Environmental History at the University of Liverpool, charts the changing...

<p>Laurie Taylor talks to Simon Jarrett, Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, about the social history of people with learning disabilities, from 1700 to the present days. Using evidence from civil and...

<p>Laurie Taylor talks to Louise Ryan, Professor of Sociology at the London Metropolitan University, about her oral history of the Irish nurses who were the backbone of the NHS for many years. By the 1960s approximately...

<p>Laurie Taylor talks to Nina Khrushcheva, Professor of International Affairs at The New School in New York City about her research into the propaganda formulas deployed by Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin over the last...

<p>Laurie Taylor talks to Molly Conisbee, Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath, about her ‘people’s’ history of mortality, beyond queens and aristocrats. From the plague...

<p>Seth Rockman, Associate Professor of History at Brown University, talks to Laurie Taylor about his study into the stories of the plantation goods which reveal how the American national economy was once organised by...

<p>Laurie Taylor is joined by Jennifer Chudy, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College, Boston, who discusses her pioneering exploration of racial sympathy. She looks at the reasons why racial...

<p>Laurie Taylor talks to Helen Charman, Fellow and Assistant College Lecturer in English at Clare College, University of Cambridge, about her study of mothers fighting for alternative futures for themselves and their...