Jason's Voyage

The BBC, like many other parts of the media, embraced Jason Arday when he became the youngest black professor at Cambridge. 

He also previously made some Radio 4 appearances when an Associate Professor at Durham University; Salford religion and ethics producer Dan Tierney used him in an edition of The Moral Maze on racial justice in 2020, and produced a Lent Talk in 2021 in which "Dr Jason Arday reflects on the health and social barriers he has faced and overcome throughout his life with a positive and grateful outlook."

Over at Liverpool John Moores University, their website seems to have been cleared of pictures of Jason with his Ph D supervisor, Professor Phil Vickerman. That doctorate transformed the future for a boy who left school with GSCEs in PE and textiles, and was guided from PE teacher to sociologist. 

Another media connection comes with Jason's ghostwriter, Eve Claxton, credited co-author of Great and Unfortunate Things, coming out from Simon & Schuster this month. Eve, from Manchester, now lives and works in Brooklyn, and has produced "StoryCorps", a weekly oral history project for NPR, a bit like Radio 4's Listening Project.