Two Oxford academics chosen as BBC's New Generation Thinkers

Daniel Lee and Kylie Murray were announced as winners of the scheme at the Hay Festival last weekend.

They were selected from hundreds of applications from academics at the start of their careers, who demonstrated their passion to communicate modern scholarship to a wider audience. 

After a six-month selection process involving a series of day-long workshops at the BBC in Salford and London, the final ten were chosen by a panel of BBC Radio 3 and BBC Arts producers, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Dr Daniel Lee is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of History. His research examines the experiences of Jews in France and in French North Africa during the Second World War. He will shortly begin a new project that explores Jewish pimping and prostitution in the Mediterranean, 1880-1940.

Dr Kylie Murray is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow and Junior Research Fellow in the Faculty of English Language and Literature. Her research explores pre-Reformation Scottish literature, books, and culture. She has recently discovered Scotland's oldest non-biblical manuscript, dating to the twelfth century, and fresh evidence which suggests that James I of Scotland was the author of Scotland's first dream-poem.

Dr Lee said: 'I was bowled over by the creativity of the other candidates who I met during the selection process, and so I was surprised and very humbled to be named as one of the 10 New Generation Thinkers.

'This award reaffirms that there is still a real interest in the Second World War: We don’t know everything about it, and there remains much more work still to be done. As a New Generation Thinker, I look forward to greater collaboration with colleagues across the disciplines so that our research and ideas can reach the largest number of people.

'There are so many talented scholars in the UK doing groundbreaking research on Modern France and Modern European History. I hope this award will allow me to bring attention to some of their research. I am grateful to my students and colleagues at Brasenose, and in the Faculty of History, for doing what they can to provide such a supportive and stimulating environment in which ideas can flourish. '

Dr Murray said: 'I'm enormously grateful to the AHRC and BBC for this unique opportunity to communicate to the wider world just how vibrant and colourful Medieval Scotland was, and how much it speaks to us today.'