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Jane Eyre and Shirley by Charlotte Bronte both refer to the unrest in Yorkshire which took place in the early years of the nineteenth century as new technology threatened jobs in the mills. Literary historian Sophie Coulombeau discusses parallels between the Luddites and concerns over AI now, and looks at what is real and what is fictional in the novels studied by Jonathan Brockbank of the University of York. Tania Shew shares some of the accounts of strikes outside the workplace which she has uncovered in her research. These include a charity worker strike and school strikes organised by pupils in 1911. How far do they strike a chord with more modern strike action?

Dr Jonathan Brockbank is a Lecturer in Modern Literature at the University of York who is exploring Luddite protests and their depiction in literature.
Dr Tania Shew is the holder of the Isaiah Berlin Junior Research Fellowship at Wolfson College, Oxford researching the women鈥檚 suffrage movement. You can hear her discussing her work on suffrage sex strikes in this episode of New Thinking called Women鈥檚 History /programmes/p0bsjyr8
Dr Sophie Coulombeau teaches literature at the University of York and has published articles on the writing of Frances Burney, Elizabeth Montagu, William Godwin and Jeremy Bentham. She is editing a volume of essays, Mary Hamilton and Her Circles, alongside colleagues working on the 鈥淯nlocking the Mary Hamilton Papers鈥� project at the John Rylands Library and is a 麻豆社/AHRC New Generation Thinker on the scheme which promotes research on the radio.

This New Thinking episode of the Arts & Ideas podcast was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), part of UKRI. You can find more collected on the Free Thinking programme website of 麻豆社 Radio 3 under New Research or if you sign up for the Arts & Ideas podcast you can hear discussions about a range of topics.