164: Rhiannon Grant

Nostalgia Interviews with Chris Deacy

My guest this week is Rhiannon Grant, who teaches in Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham. We learn about Rhiannon’s work, which includes recently having had an edited book published featuring a range of international academics and lay writers.
Rhiannon grew up in Watford, did her first degree in Philosophy and Theology in Nottingham, has an MA from Leeds and a PhD, which she also undertook at Leeds, in uses of Quaker language.
We find out that Rhiannon was into reading and writing from a young age and was, indeed, writing before she started reading, and had read The Lord of the Rings while in primary school.
We learn how Rhiannon takes book recommendations from her PhD students as much as the other way around, and we talk about changes in the way education has evolved over the years and the way certain texts e.g. The Matrix have become canonical. We discuss also the use of pop culture in seminars.
We discuss the reading records that exist via Goodreads which Rhiannon uses to log all the books she reads, and how that can all be shared with others.
We talk about the recent Roald Dahl controversy and how it plays out on social media, and how we deal with non-inclusive language, and the way that affects our understanding of other writers including Enid Blyton.
We find out what made Rhiannon enter academia and why she did a Masters in Gender, Sexuality and Queer Theory, as well as about the evolution that occurs when a student takes an idea from a tutor and moves it in a fresh direction.
We find out which tutors have inspired Rhiannon and the ways in which our ideas have developed over time, as well as about people’s assumptions about the relationship between faith and academic study.
We reflect on whether we should be changing our names when we publish in different genres, the way we may be able to overcome various obstacles that present themselves, and we learn that Rhiannon’s younger self wanted to be a vet and also a writer. At the end of the interview, we discover whether Rhiannon is a looking back or a looking forward type of person.