Thinking Allowed

When, where, and who gets to touch and be touched, and who decides? How does touch bring us closer together or push us apart? These are urgent contemporary questions, but they have their origins in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain. Laurie Taylor talks to Simeon Koole, Senior Lecturer in Liberal Arts and History at the University of Bristol about his new study of the way in which the crowded city compelled new discussions about touch, as people crammed into subway cars, skirted criminals in London's dense fogs and visited tea shops, all the while negotiating the boundaries of personal space. How did these historical encounters shape and transform our understanding of physical contact into the present day? Also, digital touch. Carey Jewitt Professor of Technology at the Institute of Education, London, explores the way technology is transforming our experience of touch. Touch matters. It is fundamental to how we know ourselves and each other, and it is central to how we communicate. So how wi