Yesterday
Ida Susser, "The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy: Taking to the Streets of Paris in the 21st Century" (Routledge, 2026)
Written under the shadow of growing authoritarianism in the United States and Europe, this book is an effort to understand resistance movements of the twenty-first century. It foregrounds the Yellow Vests to present an accurate and timely picture of a protest movement that baffle ... Show More
1h 28m
Apr 6
Alex Diamond, "Governing the Excluded: Rural Livelihoods Beyond Coca in Colombia's Peace Laboratory" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
The Colombian village of Briceño might, at first glimpse, look like many communities in the rural Global South. Many of the people living there rely on small-scale farming, even as a newly constructed hydroelectric dam threatens traditional livelihoods. Yet after decades where Br ... Show More
1h 4m
Apr 24
Mujun Zhou, "The Death and Life of Chinese Civil Society" (U Michigan Press, 2026)
In a society undergoing rapid transformation, how do people engage in debates around a foreign concept and in doing so, pursue contested political futures? The Death and Life of Chinese Civil Society examines how a group of Chinese intellectual elites referred to as the liberals ... Show More
57m 51s
Feb 2024
Laurence Cox et al., "Handbook of Research Methods and Applications for Social Movements" (Edward Elgar, 2024)
Addressing practice-oriented questions, this handbook engages with both theoretical and political dimensions, unpacking the multidimensional nature of social movement research for new and established scholars alike and for movement-based as well as academic researchers across man ... Show More
34m 5s
Jul 2023
Margareta von Oswald and Jonas Tinius, "Awkward Archives: Ethnographic Drafts for a Modular Curriculum" (Archive Books, 2022)
Awkward Archives: Ethnographic Drafts for a Modular Curriculum (Archive Books, 2022) proposes a manual for academic teaching and learning contexts. An ethnographic research approach is confronted with the demands of archival research as both disciplines challenge their inner logi ... Show More
50m 32s
Feb 2024
Matthew Wolf-Meyer and Denielle A. Elliott, "Naked Fieldnotes: A Rough Guide to Ethnographic Writing (U Minnesota Press, 2024)
Ethnographic research has long been cloaked in mystery around what fieldwork is really like for researchers, how they collect data, and how it is analyzed within the social sciences. Naked Fieldnotes: A Rough Guide to Ethnographic Writing (U Minnesota Press, 2024), a unique compe ... Show More
50m 43s
Mar 2023
Charles L. Briggs, "Unlearning: Rethinking Poetics, Pandemics, and the Politics of Knowledge" (Utah State UP, 2021)
A provocative theoretical synthesis by renowned folklorist and anthropologist Charles L. Briggs, Unlearning: Rethinking Poetics, Pandemics, and the Politics of Knowledge (Utah State UP, 2021) questions intellectual foundations and charts new paths forward. Briggs argues, through ... Show More
1h 21m
Jun 2024
Stephen Marr and Patience Mususa, "DIY Urbanism in Africa: Politics and Practice" (Zed Books, 2023)
Protracted economic crises, accelerating inequalities, and increased resource scarcity present significant challenges for the majority of Africa's urban population. Limited state capacity and widespread infrastructure deficiencies common in cities across the continent often requi ... Show More
49m 13s
Jun 2025
154 - Judith Fan: The wonders of playing with blocks (REAIR)
<p>In this re-air episode from summer 2021 (one of our first!), Anjie chats with Judy Fan, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Judy’s research is at the intersection of computational neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. In this episo ... Show More
37m 47s
Oct 2024
Subatomic Writing: Six Fundamental Lessons to Make Language Matter
Subatomic Writing: Six Fundamental Lessons to Make Language Matter (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023), by Johns Hopkins University instructor Jamie Zvirzdin, is a guide for writing about science—from the subatomic level up!
Subatomic Writing teaches that the building blocks of language ar ... Show More
58m 34s
Oct 2025
Elizabeth Sawin, "Multisolving: Creating Systems Change in a Fractured World" (Island Press, 2024)
Now, Dr. Elizabeth Sawin has dedicated her career to the theory and practice of creating change in complex systems. In 2021, she founded and is currently the Director of the Multi-solving Institute. This interview discusses her book Multisolving: Creating Systems Change in a Fr ... Show More
55m 31s
Apr 2023
Nancy K. Miller and Tahneer Oksman. "Feminists Reclaim Mentorship" (SUNY Press, 2023)
Mentorship continues to loom large in stories about women's work and personal lives-- sometimes for the better, but often for the worse. If mentors can nurture and support, they can also bitterly disappoint, reproducing the hardships they once suffered and reinforcing the same ol ... Show More
1h 14m
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
The Ethnographer's Way: A Handbook for Multidimensional Research Design (Duke UP, 2024) guides researchers through the exciting process of turning an initial idea into an in-depth research project. Kristin Peterson and Valerie Olson introduce “multidimensioning,” a method for planning projects that invites scholars to examine their research interests from al ... Show More
