Selfy Stories
Selfy Stories is a UCL podcast which began airing in May 2025, the fruit of a research collaboration between Dr Scarlett Baron (UCL English), and PhD student Alice Harberd (UCL Philosophy).
Podcast available to listen on: Spotify | SoundCloud | Apple Podcasts
The backstory
In 2023 Alice joined the English Department for a year on a UCL Research Excellence Scholarship for Cross-Disciplinary Training, working under Scarlett’s supervision. From their discussions, it rapidly emerged that they were both deeply immersed in thinking about contemporary ideas of selfhood, albeit from different disciplinary perspectives. Both were interested in thinking about the relationship between art and selfhood, and, more specifically, in assessing prominent claims made in both disciplines concerning the narrative qualities of selfhood. They decided to join forces and see what might be gained by adopting an interdisciplinary approach.
First, they applied for funding from UCL’s Centre for Humanities Education to hold a fortnightly Philosophy and Literature Reading Group bringing together staff and graduate students from UCL’s Philosophy and Literature Departments as well as from other London universities. The Reading Group met for ten highly productive and enjoyable sessions over the course of the 2024-2025 academic year.
It was in these enlightening and galvanizing fortnightly sessions that Scarlett and Alice formed the project of recording a podcast which would enable them to share the group’s conversations with a wider audience of readers and thinkers. They used what remained of the CHE funding, along with funding connected to Scarlett’s Leverhulme Research Fellowship and funding granted by the British Society of Aesthetics to create Selfy Stories.
The podcast was recorded in the UCL Studio and edited with the expert help of Ash Johnson (of the UCL Educational Media team). Season 1 is now available on Soundcloud, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts (and similar platforms), and Season 2 will be released in weekly instalments in September/October 2025.
The central question
The self is a collective obsession writ large in culture today – reflected in the language we use, the selfies we take, the stories we post. But what in fact is the self? The podcast was created to delve into this question and look closely at some of the answers provided by literature and philosophy.
Meet the podcast hosts
Much of her research to date has focused on modernist literature – especially the works of James Joyce – and on the theory and practice of intertextuality. Her current project is about the representation of the self in contemporary autofiction. Drawing on the fields of sociology, philosophy, and psychology, it focuses on the writings of Rachel Cusk, Annie Ernaux, Ben Lerner, and Édouard Louis. This research was supported by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2024-25).
Alice is a PhD student in the Philosophy Department at UCL. She is working on a PhD about the way our aesthetic engagement with the world interacts with how we understand it. If that sounds very vague, it is because she still has a lot of work to do on it! For more info, see www.aliceharberd.com.
The Funders
We are grateful to our funders. The reading group and the podcast are generously funded by a grant from the UCL Centre for Humanities Education. The podcast's first season also benefited from generous funding from the British Society for Aesthetics. In 2024-25, Scarlett's work on this project was supported by a Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust.
News from the Selfy Stories Podcast
A Night with Ian McEwan: Highlights from the Northcliffe Lecture 2026
In this student-written piece, current English Literature BA student Lamar Mansour reflects on her experience attending the 2026 Northcliffe Lecture.
13 Apr 2026
Celebrating Jane Austen's 250th Birthday
Professor John Mullan, professor of English Literature at UCL and leading Austen expert, is taking part in activities to celebrate the 250th birthday of Jane Austen.
08 Dec 2025
Presenting highlights of the ‘Literature in the Age of the Self’ summer event
Discover a video of the best moments of the starry literary event which took place at UCL on 16th June, featuring Rachel Cusk, Brian Dillon, and Vidyan Ravinthiran
19 Sep 2025