Nostalgia Interviews with Chris Deacy

10 Episodes
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By: Nostalgia Interviews with Chris Deacy

This is the podcast which accompanies the work I am doing on Nostalgia at the University of Kent. We often know what our colleagues are researching and teaching, but we don’t always know what it is that inspires those interests and passions. What is it that shapes us? What propelled us into persevering with our studies and then to want to impart that knowledge and enthusiasm to subsequent generations of students? How did we end up where we are – not just the books we read and the ones we wanted to write ourselves, but what influenced us in terms of t...

Sally Bernard
#190
Last Tuesday at 6:00 PM

My guest this week is Sally Bernard who was a schoolteacher for many years, currently living in Deal, Kent. She originally wanted to run an antique shop but her father played a key role in the career route that she followed.

Sally talks about her involvement with Sure Start, and why she disagreed with the late Glenys Kinnock on reading by osmosis. We learn why Sally wanted to be a better teacher than the teachers who had taught her, and Sally also reflects on the nature of the teaching experience.

She went to the Open University...


Sally Nicholls
#189
03/11/2024

It was a great pleasure for this week’s Nostalgia Interviews podcast to meet Sally Nicholls who was at Lampeter from 1992-95 where she studied Welsh.

Originally from Llantrisant, Sally grew up in the countryside, and she talks about her passion for horse riding, which she even accomplished in India. Sally could have gone to university in Bangor, North Wales, but ended up in Lampeter, a place with which she fell in love. Living in a Welsh speaking community was an extra bonus.

We learn that Sally cannot ever remember not speaking Welsh and has been wo...


Safeer Khan
#188
02/19/2024

It was a great pleasure for this week’s Nostalgia Interview to meet Safeer Khan. Safeer is Imam at a mosque in Gillingham where he has been based since 2014.  He leads the prayers every day and takes classes at the mosque. We learn about the Indian origins of his Ahmadiyya community which has about 35,000 members in the UK.

Safeer talks about misunderstandings around caliphs and the role of the mosque as helper for the wider community and the importance of challenging misconceptions. We discuss Islamophobia, and how Safeer tries to combat that, and Safeer recounts confrontations he has exp...


Simon Smith
#187
02/06/2024

It was a great pleasure for this week’s Nostalgia Interviews podcast to meet Simon Smith who was at Lampeter from 1988-91, where he studied Religious Studies, and then stayed on for the Interfaith Studies MA.

Simon worked in a bank for six years before going to university, and we find out why he chose Lampeter of all places, and he reflects on the shape of the department of Theology and Religious in those days. He talks about how he could never have expected to write an essay on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy before embarking on h...


Louise Naylor
#186
01/17/2024

My guest this week is Louise Naylor, who spent 34 years at the University of Kent before retiring in September 2023 as Director of Education. Louise started on a one year temporary lectureship in 1989, and we talk about the role of serendipity and opportunity and the recipe for staying the course and how one can never be prepared for everything that arises in a teaching context.

The best teaching is when the teacher is continually learning, and we discuss the performance side of education which is two-way. Louise reflects on how people often tell us when we get things wrong...


Matt Harrington
#185
12/22/2023

My guest this week is Matt Harrington who studied English at Lampeter from 1991-94. There are many great undergraduate reminisces here, beginning with a recollection of the circumstances around our graduation in July 1994.

Matt worked in a bookshop post-Lampeter and then as a junior copywriter, and he talks about how this enabled him to write with economy, and how that played out in his student days when it came to submitting essays.

Matt reveals how he managed to avoid reading lots of Victorian novels, and why he gelled with his peers because we were all arts...


James Grindrod
#184
12/12/2023

My guest this week is James Grindrod who was in Lampeter from 1993-96 where he studied Single Honours History. James talks about the impact of what he did on his life and career, and how learning is not just something that stops when you finish your full time education.

We discuss different lenses of looking at the past, including how we might have once thought that things were ‘getting better’, but that the events of the last decade or so might militate against that way of looking at history.

James talks about always having been a nost...


Lucinda Murphy Christmas Special
#183
11/30/2023

This week’s episode is a Christmas special as I am joined by someone else who has made Christmas their research project in recent years. Lucinda Murphy and I had never met before we recorded this interview in London in October 2023, and there are many parallels and synergies which make this a really compelling discussion around the ‘meaning’ of Christmas.

Lucinda began her doctorate at Durham on Christmas in 2016 at just the time that my own Christmas as Religion was published. Lucinda talks about how the impetus for her work was that so little has been written on contem...


Henry Jeppesen
#182
11/10/2023

My guest this week is Henry Jeppesen, a freelance literary translator, who studied Single Honours Swedish at Lampeter from 1993-97. We learn about Henry’s Scandinavian background, find out why he fell in love with Lampeter and what happened on his Year Abroad.

In his time at university, Henry sat on the Ents Committee and remembers seeing Zodiac Mindwarp and Doctor and the Medics perform – though we learn that he didn’t quite manage to bring Oasis or Blur to Lampeter!

We learn about the impact Lampeter had on Henry, including the Students’ Union, and Henry reflects...


John Wills
#181
10/30/2023

My guest this week is John Wills, Professor of American Media and Culture, who has been at the University of Kent since 2005. We discover that John owns various consoles and machines from the 1970s onwards and we find out where his academic interests, e.g. in video games, have come from.

John talks about how the things he is interested in emanate from his teenage years, as with cataloguing films, and we discuss defining oneself and having an attachment to something, and the way it can lead to academic pursuits.

John also worked in a video...