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Does reading really encourage empathy? Are we asked to perform a role when we walk into the workplace? How was early film and technicolour embraced for political ends? Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough finds out about the latest research being undertaken by ten academics chosen to work with the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council as the 2024 New Generation Thinkers. They'll be sharing their research on a series of BBC Radio 4 programmes across the coming year and here's a taster from the 2024 New Generation Thinkers.

Dr Emily Baughan, a historian at the University of Sheffield, is researching childcare. She is the author of Saving the Children: Humanitarianism, Internationalism, and Empire.\nDr Jaswinder Blackwell-Pal, lectures in drama at Queen Mary, University of London. Her research looks at the way workplaces, from serving coffee to providing care, ask people to perform a role.\nDr Janine Bradbury is an award-winning poet and critic who is interested in exploring reading, empathy and sentimentality. A lecturer at the University of York, she has recently published a poetry pamphlet \u201cSometimes Real Love Comes Quick & Easy\u201d.\nJade Cuttle is writing a book called Silthood and studying for a PhD at the University of Cambridge, looking at the language used by British nature poets of colour and their new word coinings. She has released an album of songs and written poems and articles including for The Times, The TLS, The Guardian, Poetry Review, Ledbury Poetry Festival and the BBC Proms. \nDr Jacob Downs is departmental lecturer in music at the University of Oxford. He has written on AI-generated music, Beyonc\xe9, how people use headphones for listening and is also an active musician and arranger, and recently worked on Erland Cooper\u2019s Folded Landscapes. \nJonathan Egid has spent the past few years digging through the archives on the trail of a brilliant and neglected thinker from 17th century Ethiopia, and the question of whether or not Zera Jacob existed. Based at King\u2019s College, London, he also hosts the podcast and interview series \u2018Philosophising In\u2026\u2019 on philosophy in lesser-studied languages.\nDr Shona Minson is a criminologist at the University of Oxford. Originally from Belfast, her work on mothers in prison has helped changed legal professional practice in the UK and overseas. \nDr Kirsty Sinclair Dootson is interested in the politics of making images in colour. Based at University College London, she has published a book exploring this called The Rainbow\u2019s Gravity.\nDr Jack Symes is a public philosopher and researcher at Durham University. He hosts The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast, and edits Bloomsbury\u2019s Talking about Philosophy book series. His most recent book was called Defeating the Evil-God Challenge: In Defence of God\u2019s Goodness\nDr Becca Voelcker's research explores artistic and filmic responses to the environmental crisis. Based at Goldsmiths, University of London, she writes for Sight & Sound and Frieze magazines, introduces films at the BFI, and serves on film festival juries.

Dr Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough has made a series of programmes for the BBC about Norse sagas, forest bathing, the history of runes, the far north, Roman bathing since being chosen as a New Generation Thinker in 2013. \nThis New Thinking podcast and the New Generation Thinkers scheme are run as a partnership between the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI.

You can hear more insights from academics based at a host of UK universities in a New Research playlist on BBC Radio 4's Free Thinking programme website.