The Hayseed Scholar Podcast

Professor Harman joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. She starts off discussing with Brent her childhood and growing up on a farm in Buckinghamshire in SE England, her interests and aspirations during that time and the family dynamics regarding politics and who was expected to take over the farm each generation. She had a gap year, then went to Manchester for undergrad and graduate training, got into global public health, political economy, and traveled to Tanzania, and then as she tells it was able to get a job in London at City University after approaching some folks from there when they were hiring, at a BISA, after two gin and tonics. She discusses the burgeoning section and field of global public health and how that slowly grew, but remained a somewhat smaller section even up until ‘the big one’, the current pandemic of Covid-19 that spread across the world in 2020. She is a film maker, the first one on this podcast, and her film, Pili, is an amazing accomplishment of a movie that was produced and filmed in Tanzania, about a woman who gets a chance to get a better job/role but is keeping a secret about her HIV-positive status. It is available on Google Play, Amazon Prime, Youtube, and other sites:

https://play.google.com/store/movies/details?id=tn6QEm-KjOU.P 

Professor Harman finishes up her conversation discussing how she approaches writing, how when and where she and fellow global health scholars Sara Davies and Claire Wenham first discussed the possibilities of Covid-19 becoming the pandemic it is today, Polyani, the upcoming ISA Presidential election and friend of the pod Prof Laura Shepherd, and more! 

Professor Rebecca Adler-Nissen joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Professor Adler-Nissen is a proflic scholar known for her work on diplomacy, integration, practice theory, and her deep knowledge and use of social theory. She talks to Brent about growing up in Denmark, but also Israel and the United States. Before going to uni, Rebecca spent some time working on boats, sailing at one point to the Canary Islands where she looked for more work at the age of 18. She eventually returned to Europe, attending both the University of Copenhagen and Sciences Po. Rebecca went to Copenhagen as well for her Master's and PhD, at a time when the 'Copenhagen school' was gaining momentum and the lectures and conversations in her program were filled with excitement. She talks to Brent about writing her PhD at Copenhagen, how she got into the topic of European integration to 'update' her grandmother who had fought in the resistance against the Germans, on the possibilities of Germans being the ones after the Berlin Wall fell who were building a peaceful order.  Rebecca reflects on her visiting position at the EUI in Florence, before defending her thesis and going on the market in 2009-2010. It was in the 2010s when Rebecca burst onto the scene with a flurry of now iconic publications, and she talks about what went into that. She shares her perspective on writing, how she decompresses with her family and through running, her approach to reviewing manuscript, and more!  

Dr. Toni Haastrup of the University of Stirling joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Dr. Haastrup was born in Aberdeen, but moved  to Nigeria when she was very young. She talks about primary and then secondary school there, the decisions she had to make early on about language training in the schools, and then her family’s move to California during the last part of high school. She discusses going to Las Positas in California, and then UC Davis, where she pursued a degree in IR, with a minor in Political Science, and her decision to go to University of Cape Town in South Africa in part because of the 2004 election here in the US. She reflects on her time at the University of Edinburgh pursuing a PhD while also working three jobs. She spent some time in Warwick after that, where she developed two book projects, a monograph that was  published in 2013 and an edited volume that was published in 2014. She talks about moving to Kent, then to Stirling where she is currently a Senior Lecturer in International Politics. We chat about her approach to writing, how she balances work and life and recharges, and her public engagement and work in fostering the women also know stuff network, which promotes the expertise of women in political science. 

Professor Francois Debrix of Virginia Tech University joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Francois grew up in France, attending college there with degrees in Spanish and English, and then International Law, Political Science and Diplomatic History. An exchange program through the University of Strasbourg brought Francois to the US and Purdue, where he pursued his Master's, and then PhD under the supervision of Cynthia Weber. Professor Debrix talks about his interest in ideology that led to his dissertation and first book, Re-envisioning Peacekeeping. That book in part helped land him the job at Florida International University where he worked for 13 years, at a time when his publishing only accelerated. He talks about moving to Virginia Tech thereafter, directing the ASPECT program, balancing his research with his administrative positions, and his approaches to writing and reading. 

Professor Timothy Longman of Boston University joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Tim chats with Brent about growing up in Illinois and Kansas, with two politically active parents and a father who was a pastor. Professor Longman attended Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma, pursuing his interests of religion and politics. While there, he also became politically active, working on the Mondale campaign in 1984.  He speaks about his graduate training at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, his interest in African politics and his decision, eventually, to focus on Rwanda as the basis for his dissertation, examining the role of the Christian churches there in its political transition. This included fieldwork in 1992 and 1993, but by the end of his time there it was becoming apparent that violence was a real possibility. In 1994, Tim took a Visiting Assistant Professor position at Drake University, and it was there that Brent took his  first political science class taught by Tim in the Fall of 1994. Tim talks about how the genocide changed his focus of his dissertation, how he was able to defend in the Spring of 1995 while still a VAP at Drake, a period of temp work in Minneapolis that preceded his work with Human Rights Watch back in Rwanda where he worked closely with Dr. Alison Des Forges on examining the factors that led to and facilitated the genocide. Tim talks about his time at Vassar, then at Boston University, as well as his approach to writing, work/life balance, and more!  

Professor Anthony F. Lang, Jr. visits the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Tony grew up in Cleveland in a big Catholic family, and he went to Catholic schools all the way through college at Notre Dame, where he took a class with Alasdair MacIntyre. Tony shares how he became interested in philosophy, and then political science, pursuing his PhD at Johns Hopkins where he took classes from William Connolly, David Campbell, and developed his dissertation under the guidance of Stephen David. He discusses his first job at the American University in Cairo, his return to the US to work at the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs and then his eventual move to St. Andrews where he still works today. Tony chats about the International Ethics section of the ISA and how it developed into the friendly environment it is today for junior scholars. He talks about his approach to writing, and how writing fiction is completely different from academic writing but how the two enrich one another for him. He concludes with some reflections on his Ethics Distinguished Scholar roundtable at the most recent ISA. 

Professor Laura Shepherd from the University of Sydney joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Professor Shepherd is an iconic and authoritative voice in International Relations, and especially with her multiple-award winning works on Gender, Peacebuilding, Methods, and and Feminism. And yet, she didn't start out planning for a career in academia. Growing up in London, then moving to just outside of Cambridge, Laura wasn't quite sure what she wanted to do. For a time, her work in the hospitality sector seemed to be the route she'd pursue. Laura reflects on her undergraduate studies, then her backpacking across the world including spending in time in Sydney, before returning to the UK. Watching a news program one evening on a human rights disaster changed her views on what she wanted to do, and she pursued graduate studies at the University of Bristol. To do so, her Master's was entirely self-funded, so she recalls working at a factory for 5 months to generate the money to pay the fees.  Laura notes that it wasn't the easiest first term, but once she found her footing there was no turning back. She talks about finding her way in academia, her first 'big three' publications, her first lecturer position at Birmingham, and the decision to move to Australia sparked from a conversation with her friend Prof. Penny Griffin. Professor Shepherd concludes with her reflections on writing, decompressing through knitting and acupuncture, and more! 

Professor Aida Hozic joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Aida chats with Brent about growing up in Sarajevo, the 1984 Olympics, pursuing theater and then having a change of career plans that led her to pursuing a Master's in Bologna, Italy, at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and then a PhD at the University of Virginia. All of this as war and violence engulfed Sarajevo, how her mother moved to the US to stay with her during her PhD studies and beyond, and what it was like to see violence every day on CNN while her academic environment just expected her to keep working. She mentions an ISA where she organized a panel with Naem Inayatullah and the fun conversations that led to it. She recalls the developments in IR in the late 1990s and early 2000s that made IR more interesting. Aida discusses the enjoyable Visiting positions she had in New York, and then moving to Florida where she still is today. She talks about her approach to writing, how cooking helps her decompress, and more! 

Professor Matt McDonald of the University of Queensland joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Brent has known of Matt's work for almost two decades, and known him directly for about half that time, emailing Matt about the latter's fantastic 2010 'Lest we Forget' IPS article and striking up a correspondence, then friendship, since that time.

Matt talks about growing up in a small town in New South Wales and how his dad having a bike accident as a child led Matt and his siblings on a path to college.  Matt moved as a kid to Brisbane, learned how to play the piano, and attended UQ for his undergrad, Masters and then his PhD, living with his parents throughout much of that time and commuting to UQ for his classes. He had a brief career as a lounge guitar player playing coffee shops and pubs, but sadly his career as a musician didn't pan out. So he talks about how and when he started to get interested in academia, and the life changing exchange he had to Aberystwyth where he really got into IR theory. He discusses going on the market, finishing his PhD while teaching full time, his first couple of publications, and the very circuitous travel for his ultimately successful interview at Birmingham.  He reflects on how enjoyable it was to have colleagues like Chris Browning, at both Birmingham and then at Warwick. Matt, Helen and their two boys enjoyed Britain, but also missed family in Australia. So Matt moved back, again, to UQ where he is today. We chat about his approaches to writing, how he decompresses via exercise, music, camping, and craft beer. This includes his treatment of craft beer evaluation, via Untappd, with the integrity it deserves. And it also, in closing, includes Matt and Brent's infamous and widely ridiculed (by HS podcast episode 4 guest, Jelena Subotic) evening out with Chris Browning in Prague at the 2018 EISA. 

Harry Gould of Florida International University joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Brent and Harry have known one another since 2007, and have become best friends. 

Harry talks about growing up in Florida, the formative experience of watching the Iranian Revolution unfold and becoming interesting in international politics, going to New College of Florida and deciding the foreign service wasn’t for him. He chats about Master’s work at FIU with Nick Onuf, the background to his 1998 study on the agent-structure debate, and his decision to pursue a PhD at Johns Hopkins. Harry talks about the environment at Hopkins, where he met Andrew A.G. Ross, and where he did his PhD work supervised by Siba Grovogui. He relays how he got a Visiting position at FIU while working on his dissertation and going on the market and getting a tenure track position at FIU.  We talk about the 2007 ISA where thanks to Tony Lang’s initiative we all met one another on a panel he organized. He discusses the development of his 2010 book on Punishment, how he decompresses and how he approaches writing. Harry and I conclude with some reflections on a difficult topic - how we deal with the loss of close academic friends.