2025 Conference / Saturday PM - Underwoods and LoLo

Welcome to the sixth series in the annual podcast programme from Academic Archers, bringing you papers from our 2025 conference.

This episode explores institutions in Ambridge as sites of power, care, and controversy. Through two papers, speakers examine Underwoods as a space of women’s social change and Lower Loxley as a flashpoint for debates about history, race, and responsibility.

Institutions, Care, and Contested Histories

0:59 – Are You Being Served? The Department Store in the Community
Jane James

This paper explores the historical role of the department store, using Underwoods as a case study. It considers how stores like Underwoods created new opportunities for women, offering employment, promotion, and unprecedented freedom of movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The paper also questions Underwoods’ unusual success in the modern retail landscape and the reluctance of Ambridge residents to work there, asking whether something more curious is going on behind the cosmetics counter.

About the speaker
Jane James is a retired project manager and active writer. She has been listening to The Archers since the late 1970s, co-hosts an Archers podcast, and has a particular fondness for a good haberdashery department.

17:45 – Duties of Care to the Present and the Past: Art, Race, and Reconciliation at Lower Loxley
Tim Vercellotti

This paper examines the controversy surrounding a portrait at Lower Loxley Hall with possible links to the slave trade. It traces the differing responses of Freddie, Noluthando, Elizabeth, Lily, and others, each reflecting wider UK debates about whether to remove, contextualise, or repurpose contested historical objects.

The paper links this storyline to national discussions on statues and memorials, and introduces the idea of the “empty plinth” as an alternative way of acknowledging painful histories while recognising the harm they represent.

About the speaker
Dr Timothy Vercellotti is Professor of Political Science at Western New England University in Massachusetts and Director of the university’s London summer programme. His teaching and research focus on political behaviour, race and politics, and political philosophy, alongside extensive post-doctoral work in all things Ambridge.