Large multi coloured letters spelling out Hay with a child climbing on them at the festival
Credit: Sam Hardwick

Dr Christopher Haworth, Dr Katharina Karcher with Yordanka Dimcheva, and Dr Imogen Peck will all be giving talks at Hay Festival this year, on topics which range from deepfake pop music, creative responses to terror attacks and the lasting legacy of Britain’s civil wars.

Hay Festival is an annual event, which brings together life-changing writers, fabulous stars of stage and screen, pioneers of science and technology, and future world leaders, for a party of ideas and stories. The festival is taking place from Thursday 23 May – Sunday 2 June.

Dr Christopher Haworth, Senior Lecturer in Music (20th/21st Century Musical Studies), will be exploring the issues that present themselves in the emerging world of ‘deepfake’ pop music. Typically viewed as a form of audio clickbait, cases such as Ghostwriter’s fusion of Drake and The Weeknd prompt us to ask what happens when music produced by deepfakes is culturally valuable. How will the legal and moral issues of ‘voice theft’ be resolved if the results are in the public interest? And how are artists using this technology to experiment with new ideas around property and ownership in a digital age?

The University of Birmingham is delighted to once again be part of the Hay Festival. The festival is a brilliant opportunity for our academics to share their incredible research with a broad audience and introduce festivalgoers to topics they might not have explored before.

Professor Fiona de Londras, University of Birmingham

Dr Katharina Karcher, Senior Lecturer in Modern Languages, and PhD researcher, Yordanka Dimcheva, will be discussing how six people impacted by three different terror attacks, have responded to what happened to them through creative outputs, exemplified by three objects. The stories powerfully illustrate how creative practice can be used to remember violent loss, (re)claim agency, and help us work towards a less violent future. 

The objects are:

  • The narwhal tusk used by MoJ employee Darryn Frost and prisoner Steven Gallant on 29 November 2019 to tackle an armed attacker on London Bridge.
  • The camera of David Fritz Goeppinger who survived the hostage-taking in the Bataclan attack in 2015.
  • A knitted teddy bear made by Figen Murray, who lost Martyn Hatt in the Manchester Arena bombing.

Dr Imogen Peck is an Assistant Professor in British History and the Director of the Centre for Midlands History and Cultures. Her Hay lecture will examine the legacy of the civil wars which engulfed Britain in the mid-seventeenth century. These wars left lasting scars on the British cultural and political imagination and Dr Peck will explore the ways that Britain’s civil wars have been remembered, forgotten, and (mis)represented, from the immediate aftermath of the conflict through to the present day. In a time of global instability and war, what can we learn from the successes and failures of early modern states when it comes to approaches to cultural memory and issues of national reconciliation?

Professor Fiona de Londras, Director of Research and Knowledge Transfer at the College of Arts and Law said: “The University of Birmingham is delighted to once again be part of the Hay Festival. The festival is a brilliant opportunity for our academics to share their incredible research with a broad audience and introduce festivalgoers to topics they might not have explored before. This year, our three talks cover an incredibly varied range of subjects which bring the breadth of the arts and humanities to life. We have something for everyone to explore and enjoy.”

The talks will take place in person at Hay Festival on:

You can book your tickets and learn more about the Hay Festival 2024 programme here.

Further details about the University of Birmingham’s talks at Hay Festival 2024 and speaker information can be found online.

Featured staff