New Thinking: About Face

Would you change your nose if you could? What about an entire face transplant? Des Fitzgerald speaks to two researchers investigating the past and future of facial difference and medical intervention.

Emily Cock, from the University of Cardiff looks at our relationship with our noses throughout history – from duels and sexual diseases to racial prejudice.

Fay Bound Alberti, from the University of York, talks about a project called AboutFace which she is running to look at the emotional impact of this complex new surgery and to investigate the moral questions it raises, looking at the impact of facial difference in the age of the selfie, and the emergence of facial transplantation as a response to severe trauma. There have been fewer than 50 face transplants globally since the first was performed in 2005 and none in the UK to date. You can find more at https://aboutfaceyork.com/ @AboutFaceYork Fay is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow from the Department of History at the University of York.

Emily Cock is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, undertaking a three-year project Fragile Faces: Disfigurement in Britain and its Colonies (1600–1850). Her book is called Rhinoplasty and the nose in early modern British medicine and culture She and host Des Fitzgerald from Cardiff University are New Generation Thinkers on the scheme run by the BBC with the AHRC to work with academics to put research onto radio.

Their conversation was recorded with an audience at the New home for School of Journalism, Media and Culture at Cardiff University.

This episode is one of a series of conversations - New Thinking - produced in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research & Innovation. Further podcasts are available on the BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking website under the playlist New Research https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90