Professor Sebastian Kaempf of the University of Queensland joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast this week. Seb grew up in Germany, with the fall of the Berlin Wall happening when he was entering his teenage years. While it had a big impact on him, he distinctly remembers his parents’ emotional reactions to that moment. He also was a conscientious obje…

Professor Lene Hansen of the University of Copenhagen likely needs no introduction to most listeners of this podcast. She has worked within what would be called the Copenhagen school or securitization theory, emphasizing within that school the overlooked lens of gender. Her work on discourse analysis is famous for being a key contribution to the de…

Huss Banai of Indiana University is an individual Brent considers himself incredibly fortunate to call a friend. He joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast to tell his amazing story and journey through life and academia. Huss was born in Iran and grew up in Northern Tehran until his family moved to Canada when he was 15. In Iran, Huss and his family expe…

Dr. Erica Simone Almeida Resende of the Brazilian War College joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Erica grew up in Brazil but, as she phrases it, 'in between worlds'. There was her Brazilian home, and there was her German school, which she explains has situated her as a sort of 'bridge' moving between the Global North and Global South. Erica went to…

Professor Jarrod Hayes joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Jarrod was born in Colorado, but moved to Utah at a young age and grew up there for a bit before relocating with his mother to just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. In high school, he found he enjoyed doing research especially with science and technology, and so he went to the University of Colo…

Dr. Oumar Ba of Cornell University visits the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Dr. Ba grew up in Senegal, attending his first school at an early age near the Senegal-Mauritania border. He developed an interest in politics in high school and at his first university (Cheik Anna Diop in Dakar) where he pursued Geography. Oumar moved to the United States in ea…

Professor Rita Abrahamsen joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Rita grew up on a small island off the coast of Southern Norway. She was a good student, very interested in the world with parents who had been the Merchant Marines, and a father who had served during World War II. She talks about the subjects she enjoyed in school, the decision to go to …

After months, and perhaps years, of cajoling and haranguing the Hayseed Scholar, friend of the pod (ep14) Matt McDonald finally convinced Brent to turn the tables and become a guest on the podcast. Matt interviewed Brent at the end of the International Studies Association conference in Montreal, in Matt's hotel room. This was after Matt had enliste…

Professor Debbie Lisle of Queens University, Belfast, grew up in North Vancouver, in an environment of 'liberal feminism' which gave her a sense of possibility in life, but it was an interesting journey thereafter. Debbie chats with Brent about her decision to go to McGill for college, playing soccer throughout her undergrad and Master's years, and…

Professor Ann Towns of the University of Gothenburg visits the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Professor Towns grew up in Sweden, and was interested in playing music and especially performing classical music as a child. But by the time she was in high school, she wanted to broaden her horizons, and get out of not only her town but Sweden. That led her to …

Professor Helen Kinsella joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Professor Kinsella grew up in Ithaca, New York, and she reflects on what that was like, plus a reluctance or indifference to going to college. She eventually chose Bryn Mawr and she talks about what an amazing environment she experienced there. Professor Kinsella also spent some time at Re…

Professor Alexander Barder joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Dr. Barder was born in Paris, France, but he and his family moved to Miami very shortly thereafter. He traveled back to France often to visit family, and mainly spoke French until going to a bilingual school. His discussions with his grandpa about World War II sparked an interest in hist…

Professor Patricia Owens joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Professor Owens grew up in London, with Irish parents who'd emigrated from Ireland during the Troubles, and the conflict in Northern Ireland provided a background to her life and especially growing up. Patricia went to a Catholic school in South London until 16, and her Catholicism was les…

Professor Carla Martinez Machain joins the Hayseed Scholar Podcast. Professor Machain talks about growing up in Mexico, specifically outside of and then also in Mexico City, the schools she went to, her interests, doing Model UN and visiting The Hague during an overseas trip when Milosevic was on trial, and then deciding to go to Rice University in…

Professor Duncan Bell joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Duncan grew up in the Midlands in a rural area of England. He was interested in international politics from a fairly young age. Duncan chose to pursue a degree in war studies at King's College London, and considered joining the military thereafter. But the transition to London from a quieter …

Xymena Kurowska of Central European University joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Professor Kurowska grew up in the northern part of Poland, at a time of world and local transition. She discusses what it was like to move around to 'closed' cities in a military family, having a father who served in the Polish military and also in a UN peacekeeping o…

Professor Tarak Barkawi joins Brent this week. He discusses growing up in Orange County in the 1970s and 1980s, in a very politically aware family, and his varied interests in military history but also LA’s punk rock scene, having a school that doubled as a fallout shelter and his first encounters with eye-opening racial violence. He talks about hi…

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 Manch…

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 t…

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 th…

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 …

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 bec…

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 Hop…

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. Growi…

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. A…

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…

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 Fl…

Professor Lucian Ashworth of Memorial University joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Luke talks about growing up in England and Wales, then moving to the Netherlands at the age of 15. He chats with Brent about his decision to go to Keele, some of the major figures in IR that shaped his interests very early on, and then going to Career Services at Ke…

Professor Priya Dixit of Virginia Tech joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Priya talks about being born in Thailand, growing up in Nepal, college and her master's in Australia, working for the United Nations, and pursuing her graduate work at American University in DC and the transition to living in the United States. She also discusses the challeng…

Maria Mälksoo of the Brussels School of International Studies, University of Kent, joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Professor Mälksoo chats about growing up in a small town in Estonia during and at the end of the Cold War, the decision to go to the University of Tartu and her exchange year in Montana, and taking the GRE in Helsinki and getting he…

Professor Juliet Kaarbo of the University of Edinburgh and Brent go way back to their days as colleagues at the University of Kansas in the mid-late 2000s. Julie shares with Brent her growing up in Kansas and Oklahoma, her graduate studies at the Ohio State University and developing her research program in Foreign Policy Analysis, getting the job a…

Halvard Leira is Research Professor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (aka 'NUPI') in Oslo. Professor Leira and Brent have been friends for some time. He chats with Brent about growing up in Norway in a family of academics, his 'devouring' of history, his graduate work at LSE and the University of Oslo, his joining NUPI and meetin…

Dr Ayse Zarakol of the University of Cambridge joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Dr Zarakol chats with Brent about growing up in Turkey, her decisions to attend college in the US, become a political science and classics double-major, and pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin (and her dissatisfaction before it with work as a paralegal). She…

Brent interviews Professor Cameron Thies of Arizona State University and the current President of the International Studies Association. Cameron talks about growing up in Nebraska, how the farm crisis along with world events got him interested in politics, almost taking a job globetrotting with Arthur Anderson, the helpful advice of his professors …

Brent chats with Jennifer Mitzen of Ohio State university. Jennifer talks about growing up in Evanston, Illinois, going to Wesleyan, living in New York after college and being an aerobics instructor, calling her mentor from a pay phone at 22 to ask for advice on grad school. Going to U of C for the PhD, her master’s thesis on Morgenthau/Waltz, her …

Jelena Subotic of Georgia State University is an accomplished scholar of International Relations who focuses on the politics of memory and identity, transitional justice, international ethics, and ontological security studies. She spoke with Brent about a number of topics during their conversation. Jelena discusses growing up in Yugoslavia and how …

Cian O'Driscoll is a Professor of International Relations, pursuing topics related to Just War, ethics, and international security. In this second part of Brent's interview with Cian, they discuss his early years as a junior scholar, including publishing, transitioning into his position at Glasgow, the infamous Elshtain book roundtable at the 2007 …

Cian O'Driscoll from the University of Glasgow does work on Just War theory, international security, and international political theory, and international ethics. He has been a friend of Brent's for well over a decade. They spoke in April 2019 following a workshop at the University of Warwick. Their conversation went a little long, so this is part …

The first episode of the Hayseed Scholar podcast is an interview with Professor Peri Schwartz-Shea of the University of Utah. We discuss her evolution as a scholar and academic, the questions she's pursued in her research, and how she became so interested in interpretive methods.Brent Steele