Dr David Hendy
University of Westminster
David Hendy is Reader in Media and Communication at the University of Westminster, and was previously a producer for the BBC. His research interests include broadcasting and its relationship with twentieth-century social, cultural and political history in Britain, Europe and America. David’s first book, Radio in the Global Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000) offered a broad assessment of radio’s place in contemporary society. His second, Life on Air: a History of Radio Four (Oxford: Oxford University Press), which was published in September 2007 and is the winner of the 2008 Longmans-History Today Book of the Year award, looked at a media institution in the wider context of its role in British social and cultural life across half a century. Other research interests include documentaries, the relationship between ‘old’ and ‘new’ media, and redefinitions of public service. David’s current and future research is focused on the media’s impact on human consciousness and culture over the past 150 years.
David Hendy’s project at CRASSH will constitute a central part of this larger task, and is entitled ‘Wireless, the Intellect and the Imagination, c. 1894-1939’. He plans to explore various ways in which the phenomenon of wireless broadcasting drew on the ideas and practices of artists and intellectuals in order to become a new medium of ideas. He will also explore how the kind of broadcasting being forged in the early twentieth century subsequently changed the conduct of debates in which intellectuals and artists were then engaged. The overall intention is to ‘re-imagine’ the origins of broadcasting in its wider intellectual milieu.
Selected recent publications:
Life on Air: a History of Radio Four (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Winner, Longmans-History Today Book of the Year 2008; Radio in the Global Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000); ‘Bad Language and BBC Radio Four in the 1960s and 1970s’, Twentieth Century British History, Vol. 17, No. 1, 2006, pp. 74-102; ‘Reality Radio: The Documentary’, in Crisell, A. (ed.) More than a Music Box: Radio Cultures and Communities in a Multi-Media World. Oxford & New York: Berghahn (2004), 167-188.
