Not one but two calls for papers!

Two calls for papers at Academic Archers HQ - for the 2021 conference, and for the fifth book, on fandom.

Both listed below, with staggered deadlines.

Call for Papers – The Sixth Academic Archers conference on BBC Radio 4’s The Archers, February 2021 (online)

Dr Cara Courage and Dr Nicola Headlam invite the submission of abstracts to the sixth Academic Archers conference, to be held on 19-21 February 2021, at University of Felpersham, and The Bull and Brookfield Barn, Ambridge (aka, Zoom.)

The conference will feature a number of 15-minute papers, as well as 5 minute Quick Pitches, as well as seeking formats that work with the digital platform, such as film, audio and webinars, around the programme and issues contained therein, of BBC Radio4’s The Archers.

Submissions are invited from any academic discipline and subjects. Past papers have included:

·       ‘From the moment those two joined the committee it’s been grunge bands, sumo wrestlers and souffle competitions’ - What Ambridge’s civil society says about UK politics in 2019

·       Why are the residents of Ambridge so financially gullible and what can we do about it?

·       When the Script Hits the Fan: When Archers fans stop listening – and why they can’t completely keep away

·       Baddies in wheelchairs and the Disneyfication of Disability

This list is not meant to be proscriptive, exclusive or exhaustive, but is meant to inspire you to think how your academic research, sector professional expertise or listener forensic knowledge of The Archers can illuminate and explain life in Ambridge and Borsetshire as well as national and global rural issues. The conference is intended to give fans of The Archers a platform to exercise their love of the programme and their subject area and submissions for consideration are welcomed from those within academia and professional sectors, those working and retired and those with specialist knowledge of The Archers.

If you are a fellow The Archers fan and/or academic please submit your abstract of 200 words with a short biography to both cara@caracourage.net and headlams@gmail.com by 31 August 2020, indicating if you are proposing a paper (15 minutes), Quick Pitch (5 minutes) or other format. Please submit this as a Word attachment. Programming will be determined by an Academic Archers peer review panel and will be communicated from end-September 2020.

Further information on Academic Archers can be found at www.academicarchers.net/ where you will also find links to films of the 2017 and 2018 conferences.

Call for Chapters –Academic Archers book on BBC Radio 4’s The Archers fandom and teaching, learning and research, with Emerald 2021

Dr Cara Courage and Dr Nicola Headlam invite the submission of abstracts for consideration for the fifth Academic Archers book, published with Emerald, a dual aspect concern of BBC Radio 4’s The Archers and fandom studies, and of use of the programme in teaching, learning and research.

Confirmed book chapters include:

·       Fans, Flouncers, Fundamentalists: Customs and belief systems of The Archers online fanbase

·       Cult and Culture: Transformative Fandom de dum de dum de dum

·       Gauging Guerrilla Academia – Exploring the impact of the ‘Academic Archers’ conference

·       When the Script Hits the Fan: When Archers fans stop listening – and why they can’t completely keep away

·       The healing powers of everyday country folk: The Archers? Better than therapy!

This list is not meant to be proscriptive, exclusive or exhaustive, but is meant to inspire you to think how your academic activity on fandom, or your use of storylines or radio production techniques for example, can add to our understanding and value of life in Ambridge.

The book is aimed at an academic and professional audience. Submissions are invited from any academic discipline and subject and can be single or inter/transdisciplinary, anchored in research and/or theory. Chapters selected for the book are invited to present a paper at the sixth Academic Archers conference, February 2021.

This publication will be the fifth of the Academic Archers library, joining The Fall of the House of Aldridge: power, politics and family in Ambridge (Emerald, 2021), Gender, Sex and Gossip: Women in The Archers (Emerald, 2019), Custard, Culverts and Cake: Academics on life in The Archers (Emerald, 2017) and The Archers in Fact and Fiction: Academic Analyses of Life in Rural Borsetshire (Peter Lang, 2016.)

Emerald publishes monographs, handbooks, short form and professional content across a range of business, finance and social science disciplines. Its aim is to publish new and innovative research and practical content that meets the needs of researchers, students, educators and practitioners.

If you are a fellow The Archers fan and/or academic please submit your abstract of 200 words with a short biography to cara@caracourage.net by 31 July 2020.

Further information on Academic Archers can be found at www.academicarchers.net/ where you will also find links to films of the previous conferences, podcasts of the Saturday Omnibuses and publication information.

Academic Archers Fifth Annual Conference 2020: Call for Papers

Dr Cara Courage and Dr Nicola Headlam invite the submission of abstracts to the fifth Academic Archers annual conference on the subject of BBC Radio 4’s The Archers.

Academic Archers are an established experimental academic community where a cornucopia of insights are explored by Research Fellows (qualifications: committed listener) and professional academics (qualifications: university affiliation or independent scholar, broadly defined or specialist practitioner, and committed listener.) The conference is expected to be held over a February 2020 weekend, at a university venue close to London.

Academic Archers are methodologically heterodox and welcome emerging ideas in experimental format, conventional and bids for keynote speakers and submissions are invited from any academic discipline.

For this, our fifth annual conference, we seek presentations - with the broadest possible interpretation - on the conference themes of:

1 – Family dynamics: the psychology and business of family relations

For example:

·         How family dramas, inheritance politics and reversals of fortune keep us all hooked.

·         Family and Kinship in Borsetshire.

·         How the case for family therapy/ grief counselling/couples counselling has become unanswerable.

·         Family (business) planning – how not to do it?

·         Macro and micro power; how national politics affect family politics

This conference strand will be curated into a 2021 edited collection for Emerald Academic Press.

2 - Fandom as a prism

For example:

·         Using The Archers in teaching and/or research.

·         The online tribes of the wider The Archers firmament.

·         Salience in listener lives: why listeners form intimate relationships with The Archers characters.

·         ‘I listen but I’m not a fan’ identity in The Archers fandom.

This conference strand will be curated into a 2020 edited collection for Emerald Academic Press.

The two strands and examples are of course not an exhaustive or exclusive listing and we seek papers on any and all aspects of life in Ambridge.

We welcome wildcards, flights of fancy and suggestions from leftfield. We have accepted papers as films, podcasts, posters, photo-essays, as well as the gamut of quantitative and qualitative approaches, archival and imaginative methods. These topic and format lists are meant to inspire you to think how your academic research, sector professional expertise or listener forensic knowledge of The Archers can illuminate and explain life of The Archers and Ambridge.

What you can expect as a presenter is the most committed and engaged audience of your life, listening avidly with curiosity, generosity and joyfulness and probing with the most penetrating of questions.

What we expect of presenters is to be an active member of the Academic Archers community of practice, contributing to media coverage, blogposts, podcasts and other promotional activity as appropriate.

If you are a fellow The Archers fan and/or academic please submit your abstract of 200 words with a short biography to cara@caracourage.net and headlams@gmail.com by 1st September 2019. Please indicate the type of presentation you are intending (Quick Pitch, 5 mins, plus Q+A; paper, 15 mins plus 5 mins Q+A; keynote, 45 mins to include Q+A.)

Programming will be determined by an Academic Archers peer review panel made up of our listener research fellows (who give the most detailed of feedback!!)

Decisions will be communicated to presenters by mid-October.

Save the Date! and Call for Papers!

A very important date for your diary – 6th April 2019, the date of the fourth Academic Archers conference!

Next year, we’re heading to Sheffield and have a venue that offers accommodation – so a veritable Butlins for Archers fans with Nicola and I as your Red Coat entertainers (but without the bing-bong-bing tannoy announcements of Hi-di-Hi).

We’re talking to the venue at the moment about a Friday night arrival dinner and going through to a Sunday morning conference session, so pencil in the 5th and 7th for now too.

As soon as the format and prices are agreed, we’ll open the box office!

Call for Papers - The Archers in fact and fiction: Academic analyses of life in rural Borsetshire

Dr Cara Courage and Dr Nicola Headlam invite the submission of abstracts to the fourth Academic Archers conference, to be held on 6th April 2019 at University of Sheffield.

The one-day conference will feature a number of 15 minutes papers, as well as 5 minute Quick Pitches and posters, around the programme and issues contained therein, of BBC Radio4’s The Archers.

Submissions are invited from any academic discipline and subjects. Past papers have included: 
- Rich Relatives or Ambridge Fairy? Patronage and expectation in Ambridge housing pathways
- Ambridgology and Counter-insurgency doctrine
- Heavy Petting: An examination of Metaphoric Relationships with Pets
- Cider with Grundy, On Orchards and the Commonplace in Ambridge
- ‘Seeming, seeming’: Othello, reputation, and Rob Titchener
- After the Flood: how can Ambridge residents develop resilience to future flooding?
- The Small Worlds of Ambridge: Power, Networks & Actants

This list is not meant to be proscriptive, exclusive or exhaustive, but is meant to inspire you to think how your academic research, sector professional expertise or listener forensic knowledge of The Archers can illuminate and explain life in Ambridge and Borsetshire as well as national and global rural issues. The conference is intended to give fans of The Archers a platform to exercise their love of the programme and their subject area and submissions for consideration are welcomed from those within academia and professional sectors, those working and retired and those with specialist knowledge of The Archers.

If you are a fellow The Archers fan and/or academic please submit your abstract of 200 words with a short biography to both cara@caracourage.net and headlams@gmail.com by 18th May 2018, indicating if you are proposing a paper (15 minutes), Quick Pitch (5 minutes) or poster (print and digital). Please submit this as a Word attachment. Programming will be determined by an Academic Archers peer review panel and will be communicated by 4th July 2018.

Further information on Academic Archers can be found at www.academicarchers.net/ where you will also find links to films of the 2017 and 2018 conferences.

2018 Conference Call for Papers

Call for Papers: The Archers in fact and fiction: Academic analyses of life in rural Borsetshire

Dr Cara Courage and Dr Nicola Headlam invite the submission of abstracts to the third Academic Archers conference, to be held on 17th February 2018 at The British Library, London.

The one-day conference will feature a number of 15 minutes papers, as well as 5 minute Quick Pitches and posters, around the programme and issues contained therein, of BBC Radio4’s The Archers.

Submissions are invited from any academic discipline and subjects might include but are by no means limited to:

·         Queer perspectives on life in Ambridge

·         Rural housing development – who benefits?

·         Entrepreneurialism in rural communities

·         Politics and protest – ‘right to the field’ in Borsetshire

·         Brexit & Ambridge, what future post CAP?

·         Gender, class and cricket in the village

·         What is a gossip? Gendered approaches to info sharing

·         Intergenerational justice in Ambridge

·         Greenwashing Ambridge, from eco-warriors to biodiversity accountants?

This list is not meant to be exclusive or exhaustive, but is meant to inspire you to think how your academic research, sector professional expertise or listener forensic knowledge of The Archers can illuminate and explain life in Ambridge and Borsetshire. The day is intended to give fans of The Archers a platform to exercise their love of the programme and their subject area.

If you are a fellow Archers fan and/or academic please submit your abstract of 200 words with a short biography to both cara@caracourage.net and headlams@gmail.com by 28th July, indicating if you are proposing a paper, Quick Pitch or poster. Please submit this as a Word attachment. Programming will be determined by an Academic Archers panel and will be communicated by mid-September.