Radio 4’s Today programme on campus

Today will be broadcast from Aberystwyth Arts Centre on Thursday 17 May.

Today will be broadcast from Aberystwyth Arts Centre on Thursday 17 May.

16 May 2018

BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today news and current affairs programme will be broadcasting live from Aberystwyth University on Thursday morning 17 May 2018.

Presenter Justin Webb will co-present the programme from Aberystwyth Arts Centre on Penglais campus in front of a live audience of 150 staff, students and local people.

Entry to the event is free and all tickets have been taken but the programme can be heard live on BBC Radio Four between 6am-9am on Thursday 17 May or later on BBC iPlayer Radio.

A range of items with University staff and student contributors are expected to feature in the programme, including:

  • Dr Gwion Evans from the Department of Mathematics will present the daily puzzle feature at around 6:45am.
  • Microbiologist Dr Arwyn Edwards from the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS) will start a live DNA sequencing test around 6.50am using samples of earth from Justin Webb’s garden and Plas Penglais. The findings will be broadcast live on air shortly before 9am.
  • The Vice-Chancellor of Aberystwyth University, Professor Elizabeth Treasure, is due to be interviewed between 7am – 8am.
  • Dr Fiona Corke from the National Plant Phenomics Centre - a National Capability funded by the BBSRC, hosted within IBERS will be discussing the work done at the Phenomics glasshouse in Gogerddan, with a particular focus on drought resistance and plants that thrive in low nutrient environments.
  • Professor Richard Marggraf Turley from the Department of English & Creative Writing will be interviewed around 8:45 on Shakespeare’s King Lear and the psychotoxic wheat mimicker ‘darnel’ – Latin name ‘Lolium temulentum L’. Resembling wheat, if it wasn’t pulled out and got baked into bread – so called ‘hot bread’ – it made people hallucinate.

The Welsh Government Cabinet Secretary for Education, Kirsty Williams AM, will also be in Aberystwyth for an interview with Justin Webb.

The programme is also keen to speak to Aberystwyth students and Students’ Union officers.

For more information about the Today programme, please see the BBC Radio 4 website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qj9z.