News
Research Round-up: Good News from the Faculty of Media, Arts and Humanities
Posted on behalf of: Faculty of Media, Arts and Humanities
Last updated: Tuesday, 11 November 2025
A celebration of recent research activity and successes of Media, Arts and Humanities researchers.
Formerly the 'Good News' section of the Research Newsletter, the Research Round-up is a regular feature within the Media, Arts and Humanities Institute and a space to celebrate each other's successes.
If you'd like your good news included in the next Research Round-up, email us at MAH-research@sussex.ac.uk.
To catch up on previous news, read the October Research Round-up.
Awards, recognition and funding
-
Martin Spinelli’s The Rez podcast has made it into the Top 10 charts in US in its category. It has also ranked at number one in Ireland, South Korea, Bahrain, Greece, Kuwait and Lithuania.
External engagement
-
Danny Bright and Lee Westwood as Noise Peddler, Dylan Beattie as Furrowed, and James Burns' ambient project Robinson's Village featured in Push to Play, a debut showcase celebrating creativity and electronic music from students, staff and alumni at the University. Organiser Georgina Curtis described it as “a celebration of creativity at Sussex”. The event was featured on BBC Radio Sussex (from 1:55:44).
-
Ivor Gaber, Emeritus Professor spoke with Sky News about Donald Trump threatening the BBC with a $1 billion defamation claim over the airing of its edited Panorama segment. Ivor said that the Panorama error should have been dealt with in a more thorough, timely and transparent way.
-
Laura Kounine was interviewed on BBC Radio Sussex about the history of witchcraft, ahead of the talk she gave at the ACCA on Halloween. Listen to Laura via BBC Sounds (from 7.25).
-
Ambra Moroncini was one of the few selected Italian scholars invited to present at the Symposium Il romanzo italiano degli anni Settanta. Conoscere e raccontare la complessità, organised by the University of Bari. Ambra's presentation was on "Lezioni di vita in Lettera a un bambino mainato (1975) di Oriana Fallaci".
-
Lynne Murphy is quoted in the Newsweek article ‘American Moves to UK—Learns “Hard Lesson” About How He Treats Wait Staff’, explaining that the "thank you situation" is "complicated" when it comes to the differences between the UK and US. She reviewed Michael Erard’s book on first and last words, Bye Bye, I Love You for the Times Literary Supplement. Her contribution to Oxford Bibliographies, “Synonymy”, is now live. Lynne’s quote in The Times article ‘Trash-talking children are sounding like Americans, say teachers’ was picked up by The Independent, CBS News Online, BBC Radio Somerset, BBC Radio Merseyside and Sky News. Lynne noted that children’s language is fluid, and the trends of UK children using Americanisms like "candy", "elevator" and "trash" are unlikely to persist permanently, reflecting the natural evolution of English.
-
Micheál O'Connell helped facilitate aspects of Beta Festival in Dublin, including taking part in an expert presentation with Oonagh Murphy, Donal Mulligan and Ploi (AI x Design) to open discussions at the AI Art Assembly events.
-
Lucy Robinson discussed attitudes towards nuclear war in the 1980s on BBC Wales, saying that there was “doublethink” that the threat of nuclear war was very real, but also that it was simply posturing and brinksmanship. Listen to Lucy on BBC Sounds (at timestamp 50.40).
-
Charlotte Taylor gave a keynote on 'The metaphor of voice and migration discourses' at the workshop on 'Migrants’ voices in discourse: bottom-up perspectives on migration’ at La Sapienza.
-
Tom Wright published a piece on the 'No Kings' movement in the US and the tradition of anti-monarchist rhetoric in American political history in The Conversation. Read ‘“No kings”: America’s oldest political slogan is drawing millions out onto the streets’.
New work and publications
-
Lynne Cahill organised the 15th International Workshop on Written Language and Literacy in Pisa and presented a paper entitled: "How many ways can you spell that? Intra-document variation in Middle English documents”. PhD student, Rawan Almuzaini presented a poster entitled "What can Biscriptality offer in the realm of social media?".
-
Hannah Field and Ben Highmore with Seth Giddings’ edited book, Playthings and Playtimes: Play, affect and material culture in the ludic world has been published open access with UCL Press thanks to the AHRC.
-
Laura Kounine’s book At The Full Moon: The Untold Story of the Werewolf Trials has been signed by Hodder Press. It tells the story of more than 300 case studies of ‘werewolf’ trials that took place in the early modern period. Across Europe and into the New World, people – mostly men – suspected of awful crimes were accused of being werewolves and put on trial. The book will be out around Halloween 2027, in hardback, ebook and audio.
-
David Tal’s new book The Strained Alliance: George H. W. Bush, Yitzhak Shamir, and the US–Israel Special Relationship has been published by Cambridge University Press.
-
Tom Wright published a book Oracy: The Politics of Speech Education with Cambridge University Press, a collection of interventions in the debate over speaking and listening in UK schools, featuring a foreword by Alastair Campbell. Tom also delivered an invited lecture on 'The Politics of Inarticulacy' at the University of Cambridge's Faculty of English Nineteenth Century Seminar.