Apr 2025

Amy Zhang, "Circular Ecologies: Environmentalism and Waste Politics in Urban China" (Stanford UP, 2024)

After four decades of reform and development, China is confronting a domestic waste crisis. As the world's largest waste-generating nation, the World Economic Forum projects that by 2030, the volume of household waste in China will be double that of the United States. Starting in ... Show More

1h 7m

Mar 20

Gabrielle Oliveira, "Now We Are Here: Family Migration, Children’s Education, and Dreams for a Better Life" (Stanford UP, 2025)

Who gets to live a life with dignity? Each day, families around the world make the difficult decision to leave their homes in search of safety, stability, and opportunity. For many migrant families, this search centers on access to strong, caring, and equitable educational system ... Show More

27m 50s

Mar 20

Piergiorgio Di Giminiani et al. eds., "The Futures of Reparations in Latin America: Imagination, Translation, and Belonging" (Rutgers UP, 2026)

Over the last thirty years, Latin America has undergone an unprecedented wave of reparations targeting victims of political violence during military regimes, Indigenous and Afro-Latin groups affected by historical processes of dispossession, and citizens suffering from environmen ... Show More

1h 13m

Sep 2024

Melissa Osborne, "Polished: College, Class, and the Burdens of Social Mobility" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

Why do people go to college? In Polished: College, Class, and the Burdens of Social Mobility (U Chicago Press, 2024), Melissa Osborne, an associate professor at Western Washington University, explores the experiences of students from low income and first-generation backgrounds wh ... Show More

45m 40s

Aug 2025

Pauwke Berkers and Yosha Wijngaarden, "A Sociology of Awkwardness: On Social Interactions Going Wrong" (Taylor & Francis, 2025)

How does sociology help to explain modern life? In A Sociology of Awkwardness: On Social Interactions Going Wrong (Routledge, 2025)Pauwke Berkers, a full professor Sociology of Popular Music at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Yosha Wijngaarden, an assistant professor of Med ... Show More

33m 43s

Sep 2023

Michael D. Smith, "The Abundant University: Remaking Higher Education for a Digital World" (MIT Press, 2023)

For too long, our system of higher education has been defined by scarcity: scarcity in enrollment, scarcity in instruction, and scarcity in credentials. In addition to failing students professionally, this system has exacerbated social injustice and socioeconomic stratification a ... Show More

59m 45s

Aug 2024

Anthony Abraham Jack, "Class Dismissed: When Colleges Ignore Inequality and Students Pay the Price" (Princeton UP, 2024)

Elite colleges are boasting unprecedented numbers with respect to diversity, with some schools admitting their first majority-minority classes. But when the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and racial unrest gripped the world, schools scrambled to figure out what to do with the diversi ... Show More

32m 46s

Jan 2025

Peter Mandler, "The Crisis of the Meritocracy: Britain's Transition to Mass Education Since the Second World War" (Oxford UP, 2020)

How did public demand shape education in the 20th century? In The Crisis of the Meritocracy: Britain’s Transition to Mass Education since the Second World War (Oxford UP, 2020), Peter Mandler, Professor of Modern Cultural History at the University of Cambridge, charts the history ... Show More

39m 25s

Jul 2023

Marcos González Hernando and Gerry Mitchell, "Uncomfortably Off: Why Higher-Income Earners Should Care about Inequality" (Policy Press, 2023)

How can we build a better social and political settlement? In Uncomfortably Off: Why the Top 10% of Earners Should Care about Inequality (Policy Press, 2023), Marcos González Hernando an Honorary Research Fellow at the UCL Social Research Institute and Postdoctoral Researcher at ... Show More

43m 17s

Mar 2024

Colette Cann and Eric Demeulenaere, "The Activist Academic: Engaged Scholarship for Resistance, Hope and Social Change" (Myers Education Press, 2020)

How can traditional academic scholarship be disrupted by activist academics? How can we make space for those who are underrepresented and historically oppressed to come to academia as their authentic selves? How can the platform of academia create space for change in the world? I ... Show More

56m 56s

Nov 2024

Lauren D. Olsen, "Curricular Injustice: How U.S. Medical Schools Reproduce Inequalities" (Columbia UP, 2024)

Medical schools have increasingly incorporated the humanities and social sciences into their teaching, seeking to make future physicians more empathetic and more concerned with equity. In practice, however, these good intentions have not translated into critical consciousness. Hu ... Show More

51m 10s

Mar 2024

Derron Wallace, "The Culture Trap: Ethnic Expectations and Unequal Schooling for Black Youth" (Oxford UP, 2023)

How does race matter in schools? In The Culture Trap: Ethnic Expectations and Unequal Schooling for Black Youth (Oxford UP, 2023), Derron Wallace, the Jacob S. Potofsky Chair in Sociology at Brandeis University, tells the contrasting stories of two schools in the UK and USA. The ... Show More

55m 19s

Apr 2024

Margaret Price, "Crip Spacetime: Access, Failure, and Accountability in Academic Life" (Duke UP, 2024)

In Crip Spacetime: Access, Failure, and Accountability in Academic Life (Duke University Press, 2024), Margaret Price intervenes in the competitive, productivity-focused realm of academia by sharing the everyday experiences of disabled academics. Drawing on more than three hundre ... Show More

1h 9m

Melissa Osborne, "Polished: College, Cla...