In the latest episode of the Nostalgia podcast series, Dr Chris Deacy, Reader in Theology and Religious Studies in the Department of Religious Studies, speaks to Dr Francis Stewart, Implicit Religion Research Fellow at Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln.

Francis was born just outside Belfast and we learn how she had to leave Northern Ireland in order to study World Religions. Chris and Francis discuss growing up during the bomb scares and the at the time of the ‘ring of steel’ in her native Northern Ireland, her working class punk identity (and her book ‘Punk Rock is my Religion’), the way religion has been used as a political tool, jumping up and down in her cot to Status Quo as a baby, being the first person in her family and the estate where she lived to go to university, the use of religion in superhero films, and about wanting to be a tattoo artist when she was 15.

Future interviewees will include Gavin Esler, Chancellor of the University of Kent, and Professor Clive Marsh, Head of the Vaughan Centre for Lifelong Learning at the University of Leicester.