Breaking Boundaries: A podcast from Northwestern University’s Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs

Building scientific capacity is essential to strong institutions and supporting problem-solving and innovation, especially in the Global South. Romain Murenzi, PhD, Executive Director of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) joins Annelise Riles to talk about United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16, peace, justice and strong institutions, and how TWAS is working to meet this goal.

Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine is no longer a short-term event and its impact is going to shape global affairs for a long time to come, according to Fiona Hill, a leading expert on Russia and Vladimir Putin’s regime. In this episode, Hill shares insight on Putin’s actions, what could happen next, and how the war may impact our world for decades to come. She shares these insights from her vantage point as a Russia adviser to two U.S. presidents and co-author of the book “Mr. Putin: Operative ...

Solving the world's most complex problems, such as those the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals aim to tackle, requires new ways of thinking. In this episode, Julio M. Ottino, Dean of the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Northwestern University, discusses his new book “The Nexus,” which is a call to “augmenting” our knowledge in the face of complex global challenges, by bringing together the insights, and the conceptual moves, of art, technology, and scie...

Today’s guest is working towards UN Sustainable Development Goal 16: peace, justice and strong institutions. Alison E. Dilworth is a Foreign Service Officer with more than 20 years of experience, serving in countries such as Paraguay, Israel, Egypt, Poland and the United Arab Emirates. She is currently the Director of the Office of Children’s Issues at the U.S. Department of State and President of Executive Women at State. In this episode, she talks about her career and what...

Good cybersecurity is critical to protecting people's rights to privacy and also the security of our economic markets. The companies behind popular digital platforms are critical players in this effort that is central to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16, which is peace, justice and strong institutions. Roland Cloutier is the global chief information security officer at TikTok. He has more than 30 years of experience in cybersecurity and law enforcement. In this episode of Breaki...

Marwan M. Kraidy is a scholar of global communication, a leading authority on Arab media, and the CEO and Dean of Northwestern University in Qatar. One of his first major initiatives as Dean was the creation of the Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South. The Institute will produce and promote evidence-based storytelling focused on the histories, cultures, societies, and media of the Global South and much more. He discusses the goals of this institute and how it relates to Unit...

Maria Hadden brings a global point of view to her position on the Chicago City Council as the alderwoman of the 49th Ward. Since being elected in May 2019, she has pushed forward issues of local, national and international importance, such as recognizing Juneteenth as a city holiday, exploring reparations to Black people and supporting a treaty outlawing nuclear weapons. Hadden shares background about her life before the elected office, that included undergraduate and graduate work in in...

On this episode of Breaking Boundaries we welcome Juliet Sorensen, a Clinical Professor of Law at Northwestern’s Pritzker School of Law and the director and founder of the Northwestern Access to Health Project. Sorenson is an international human rights champion whose work is changing the lives of women and girls around the world. Gender justice is a foundation of all the UN’s sustainable development goals. It figures as SDG #5, Gender Equality, but is also a critical part of how w...

In recent weeks, Russia has assembled tens of thousands of troops on its border with Ukraine, actions that led to a phone call on Dec. 7, 2021, between President Biden and Vladimir Putin about consequences should Russia plan any attack. On this episode of the Breaking Boundaries podcast, two former U.S. ambassadors weigh in on the current tensions and provide context and opinions on the current situation. Guests: Steven Pifer, a William J. Perry Research Fellow at the Center for Int...

Using the power of narrative film to explore a current global crisis is not only a delicate art, but a personal passion for Rana Kazkaz. She is an award-winning filmmaker and Assistant Professor of Communication at Northwestern University in Qatar where she teaches narrative filmmaking. Her work focuses on Syrian stories with many of her short films recognized at the world’s leading film festivals including Cannes, Sundance and Tribeca. She recently screened and discussed her first featu...