The stars, the moon and music from a balloon

The arts and humanities aren't what they used to be, finds Anna Fazackerley, who checks out a host of dream jobs with sometimes romantic applications.

If the arts and humanities ever were full of fusty, white-haired academics poring over textbooks in the library, they are not now. New subjects are opening up and old ones are changing. The sector has its own research council and the Government is waking up to its importance to the economy and society in general. Across the UK there are exciting young researchers striving to develop their own niches as they scramble up the career ladder.

In the third of a new series on the rising stars of academe, we bring you some of the key names to watch in the arts and humanities, as nominated by subject associations and research funders. Are these tomorrow's professors, keynote speakers and media stars?

'Academic funding is a curious world. The good thing is that, as an artist, I can take a step back from it'

Luke Jerram

Luke Jerram recently made a 3m black cloud out of tissue paper and propelled it into the air with meths burners to cheer up a depressed friend.

"The cloud turned into a fireball at 30m, but it made him feel better," he says.

Mr Jerram, a 31-year-old colour-blind sculptor and one of Britain's sparkiest "sci-art" specialists, tries to approach everything that he does with similar imaginative flair.

In his role as the University of the West of England's first arts and science research fellow, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, he is propelling the university's sleep science research into the public arena.

He hit the headlines when he flew his sky orchestra - a series of seven hot-air balloons with speakers attached - over the sleeping city of Stratford-upon-Avon on midsummer's night.

"Each balloon plays a different part of the score, so it is like a surround-sound effect," he says. "We are delivering a beautiful artistic experience to people on the edge of sleep."

Balloons are a recurring theme in Mr Jerram's life. Last year, he proposed to his girlfriend from one, giving her an engagement ring with a voice message etched into it to be played on a miniature record player that he designed.

In addition to its sheer spectacle, Mr Jerram is excited by his artwork's potential to cross the border into scientific discovery. He is working with sleep psychologists in an attempt to explore the phenomenon of external sounds shaping the content of someone's dreams.

"We have built and are testing the Dream Director, which can monitor the heart rate of sleepers," he explains. "When you dream, your heart rate fluctuates dramatically and your body is paralysed.

"We have a programme that can play a sound sample at exactly the time (that you start to dream). We then ask the dreamer to wake up and record their dreams."

The team is getting some exciting results. Recently, a subject was played the sound of a steam train while she slept. When she awoke, she reported dreaming about trains.

The Dream Director, Mr Jerram believes, could have clinical uses, helping people suffering from trauma or recurring nightmares. "It is probably the first time I've felt I have had a real scientific impact," he says.

The experience has inspired him to stay in academia, and he is being touted in the sector as a rising star who could bring science to the general public in a new way.

Yet, as well as the thrill of scientific discovery, he has discovered something sure to cause him sleepless nights - the anxieties of academic funding.

"We need to apply for more funding to take the sleep project further, but I can't apply for that until papers have been written and published. That is really annoying," he says.

"As a result I don't have a job for next year, but by writing this up I might get a job for the year after," he explains.

"It is a curious world. The good thing is that, as an artist, I can take a step back from it."

'In my area, the more you go back into the past, the more a literary scholar needs the skills of an historian'

Brycchan Carey

When Brycchan Carey toured the UK at the age of 18 he shunned the standard Lonely Planet guide. Instead, he hitchhiked with a copy of Daniel Defoe's 1725 book, A Tour Through The Whole Island of Great Britain .

It might not have pointed him in the direction of the best nightclubs, but it sparked an enduring passion for 18th-century literature that drives his research decades on.

Dr Carey, a senior lecturer in the English department at Kingston University and an expert on the literature of slavery and abolition, is on sabbatical this year, having won an award from the Higher Education Funding Council for England's Promising Researcher Fund.

This has bought him the time to concentrate on his book about the beginnings of anti-slavery thinking among Quakers in 18th-century America.

As part of his research, he arranged to spend six months delving into Pennsylvania University's "wonderful archives" in Philadelphia.

"It was great," he says. "I was able to write the bulk of the book during that period, because I didn't have the distractions. Under normal circumstances it can be a struggle - the teaching and administration get in the way.

"The worst thing for me is the marking. Perhaps I do it too thoroughly.

That does mean that sometimes I have to put my research on the back burner."

The book's combination of literary and historical research is very much Dr Carey's style.

"There are some English researchers and some historians who will have nothing to do with each other.

"But in my area you are increasingly seeing interdisciplinary working.

"The more you go back into the past, the more a literary scholar needs the skills of an historian," he says.

Slavery - and more particularly the abolition of slavery - has been a major interest for him since he studied for his first degree in English and history.

"I realised there was very little written about slaves in Britain, or about the culture of abolitionism," he recalls.

"I was set an essay and realised that there were huge gaps. That was exciting."

He adds: "The story of Britain's involvement in the slave trade is a very shameful one.

"It seemed to me important that the story was told. It was more than just intellectual curiosity."

As well as managing his research, teaching and administration, Dr Carey has set up an impressive website for people interested in slavery, which attracts about 20,000 visitors a month.

"It is all handcrafted by me but I had to teach myself the technical stuff, and that took a while," he says. "One thing that I consider very, very important is that academics should communicate their work to the wider public.

"If work is important, it should be available to as many people as possible."

He adds: "Lots of other people, including PhD students and the descendants of abolitionists, are adding their own pages to the site now.

"That's a wonderful thing. There's a real communication going on there."

But Dr Carey is not afraid to stray outside his specialism.

He is already relishing his next project - an investigation of stories about space exploration in the 17th and 18th century.

"There were hundreds of imaginary moon voyages," he says. "The material is so good. When you have been working on one area for a long time it is good to approach something completely fresh."

'Being a small disciplinary group, there is not a period when you don't have to do one of the big admin roles'

Lucy Mazdon

Lucy Mazdon, one of the UK's leading lights in the relatively young discipline of film studies, is exasperated by the assumption that every French film is the same.

"People think it has to be arts cinema, boring, middle class and about relationship problems," she says. "I see this in my students and I see it in historiography. But that is very different from how cinema is seen in France."

Dr Mazdon, a lecturer at Southampton University, has just embarked on a project to rethink such stereotypes, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. With the help of a small team she will research the distribution of French cinema in Britain from the 1930s onwards.

She will also be leading a team of researchers in a project on Europe and cinema, exploring how film shapes and interprets the EU. Having jumped the difficult hurdle of securing EU funding, Dr Mazdon and the other two project leaders will have to organise researchers from different disciplines in 20 different countries.

"It is a big undertaking," she agrees. "It remains to be seen how it will work out. The international workshop in September was wonderful. It was so exciting. People were coming up with some really great ideas."

But the 39-year-old is used to juggling. She has twins who started school this year, and points out that balancing childcare with research has been the biggest challenge of her career. "Summer is the time when most academics make progress, but I am faced with the horror of the school holidays," she laughs.

Yet she is adamant that it is possible to be a mother and a successful academic. "It is never easy, but as a profession I think it is more supportive than some. My institution has been very supportive." But she adds: "The downside is it doesn't really ever end. I never feel I've done what I need to do and can switch off."

When she arrived at Southampton, film studies was not yet established, but the institution is now regarded as one of the frontrunners in film.

"Being a small disciplinary group, there is not a period when you don't have to do one of the big administration roles. But you have an involvement in the shaping of the subject," she says.

'As long as I get the teaching done, what I do academically is left completely open. That is great but a little intimidating'

Justin Watkins

Working in a tiny specialist subject in a small institution may have limitations, but it has enabled Justin Watkins, a well-reputed senior lecturer in Burmese at the School of Oriental and African Studies, to climb the career ladder extremely quickly.

"My predecessor, whom I found utterly inspiring, had the good sense to decide to retire just as I finished my PhD," he says. "That was fantastic timing as I was able to step into his shoes."

At 35, Dr Watkins has total autonomy, working alongside one other Burmese teacher who works part time. "I am a one-man-band Burmese teaching operation. As long as I get the teaching done, what I do academically is left completely open. That is great. But it is also a little intimidating."

His research centres on compiling resources for minority languages in Burma. He is coming to the end of a big project for the Arts and Humanities Research Council, developing a dictionary of the relatively widely spoken Wa language.

"Burmese sucks you in. You end up involved in the political situation," he says. "It is a real treasure house of South-East Asian languages, many of which haven't been looked at at all."

But dealing with a country such as Burma throws up its own problems. When he has a sabbatical, Dr Watkins cannot work in Burma as he would in the UK because the internet is not available. "That said, it is nice to have a holiday from e-mail," he laughs.

In addition, foreign academics know that their credentials will be examined, not only by the authorities but also by anti-government groups keen to nose out sympathisers.

"My policy is to remain outwardly neutral," Dr Watkins says. "I voice my opinions privately. The biggest contribution I can make to the country is by supporting minority languages."

He adds that British academia can also be a political minefield for language researchers.

"We are a loss-making faculty and that makes us vulnerable," he explains.

"You are in a position where you are trying to justify the fact that only nine people a year do Burmese."

But Dr Watkins is confident that he has proved himself and that his subject will not be "picked off" if it comes to cuts. "If I left Soas, I would leave academia and I don't want to do that," he says.

'Philosophy is a discipline that proceeds through discussion. Having eager young students is all part of the experience'

John Tasioulas

John Tasioulas, fellow and tutor in philosophy at Christ's College, Oxford University, is unafraid of treading on egos in his sector.

"What I really care about is getting a view that is correct. I don't care if that is the received view or not," he says.

"Of course, what philosophers might see as friendly criticism, might shock others into thinking that we are at each other's throats."

The 41-year-old Australian, regarded by key figures in the sector as one of the stars of the future, is an expert on moral and legal philosophy.

One of the issues he is battling with is how we fit human rights into a global justice system. As with everything he does, he is determined not to be too simplistic in his answers, believing that philosophers should admit that the moral dilemma is always complex rather than black and white.

"There is a tendency in philosophy to be reductive," he argues.

"People want to say that human rights protect one basic value - our moral status, or our autonomy. My alternative approach is to say there is a diversity of universal human interests that feed in."

He adds: "You couldn't say the right not to be tortured is simply about not undermining your freedom. It is also about the fact that torture is extremely painful."

This is not simply an intellectual point. Dr Tasioulas notes that if we are too narrow in our legal and moral reasoning, it will prove very difficult to convince different cultures to buy in to these universal values.

"Other cultures might not prioritise autonomy to the same extent we do. It is harder then to say that these human rights are not simply a Western construct," he explains.

In October, he will become the director of graduate studies in his department, and he is adamant that teaching is much more than a chore that interrupts research.

"At Oxford, we have some brilliant students, and especially wonderful graduate students," he says passionately.

"I feel I benefit enormously from them. Philosophy is a discipline that proceeds through discussion. Having eager young students is all part of the experience."