David Byrne, Durham University

Desert Islands differ and the resources available to castaways can be radically different. Crusoe had a full set of tools, cooking implements, guns and gunpowder. Most real castaways have next to nothing. I would settle for a billhook, a decent knife, some fishhooks and line, a cast iron pot, and a fire starting flint and…

Emma Jackson, Goldsmiths

1: If you could only have four books on you island, what would you take? The Art of Listening – Les Back Les Back is one of my favourite writers, sociological or otherwise, and this is book I reach for if I ever need a reminder of why I wanted to do sociological research or…

Laurie Taylor

A slightly different Castaway for our Easter Weekend Special:  instead of telling you what Laurie Taylor will take to his desert island, we are going to show you! If you want to find out why, there is still time to ask him at our Pre-conference day on April 5th! Kind of Blue. Miles Davis Piano…

Graham Scrambler, UCL

As an only child the prospect of being castaway retains a certain appeal. I can even conceive of jumping ship in pursuit of period of isolation. To be alone is not necessarily to be lonely. But I guess I’d need rescuing after a bit.  What I often covet is companionable solitude: being ignored amid a…

Colin Clark, UWS

    “How did this all begin?” This is the biography and history bit. I know my C. W. Mills. In one sense it all began at Carnoustie High School with an impressive clutch of failed (‘no mention’) Highers in 1987. Then, that same year, it kind of started again with a temporary summer job…

John Holmwood, University of Nottingham

The idea of being cast away on a desert island provokes two thoughts. Where was I going? Or, more darkly, why was I turfed out of the boat (though it’s possible I was just drifting!)? Why is the island unoccupied, with no hospitable stranger to take pity on my plight? That first castaway, Robinson Crusoe,…

Sarah Burton, Goldsmiths

Before even beginning, I feel the need to note that I’d find being cast away on a desert island beyond deathly. I can’t bear inactivity, and the notion of endless days lying in the sun is one which fills me with a horror akin to Christmas Eve shopping with ceaseless serenading from Aled Jones and…