The Hayseed Scholar Podcast

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 enlisted throughout the week a host of conspirators who helped him lobby Brent to be interviewed. Over a few beers and with much good cheer, they chat about Brent's growing up in Iowa, attending Chicago Bears games as a kid, having two teachers as parents, and how golf shaped his college decision-making. They discuss Brent's journey through graduate school, the PhD, and his positions at the University of Kansas and now the University of Utah. Often pounding the table like some 1930s-era dictator, Brent discussed what the tenure process was like for him at KU, the difficult but also life-changing move to Utah, walking with Chase pups for all kinds of reasons, how he approaches writing and how he unwinds and recharges by going back to Iowa and seeing his family. Matt and Brent first connected in 2010 when Brent reached out to Matt about his IPS article, and that prompted a discussion here about how and why Brent has sent those complimentary emails to scholars.
A number of F-bombs were dropped, razzing of Jelena Subotic, Tony Lang, and Chris Agius ensued and friend of the pod and special guest Cian O'Driscoll made an appearance towards the end of the conversation. It’s a whirlwind discussion and one Brent remains self-conscious about, but also a rewarding experience for him in chatting with, and about, longtime friends in this vocation.

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 history, which, along with math, were his favorite subjects in school. Alex went to boarding school in Geneva his senior year of high school, worked at a bank and thought about finance or banking as a major. But after three semesters at American University in DC, he quite college, went back to Miami and worked various jobs (including brokering) for the next seven years. Alex chipped away at his undergraduate degree, finishing in Spring 2003 with a BS in Mathematics. He became interested in International Relations, and took an IR theory seminar, co-taught by Harry Gould and Nick Onuf, at FIU in the Spring of 2004 that got him interested in being an academic. After being wait listed that year for the PhD program at Johns Hopkins, Alex got in the following year and pursued his PhD studies there. He talks about writing and publishing with Francois Debrix, including his first book published by Routledge in the Interventions series in 2012. Alex got a job at American University of Beirut in 2013, where he and his family stayed until 2014, seeing first hand the impact of the nearby civil war in Syria. Alex returned to FIU as an Assistant Professor that year, where he has been ever since. They finish by chatting about how he approaches writing, his practices of decompressing and health, spending time with his family, and more!

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 area, and the experiences he had there, changed his plans. He tells Brent about getting his Master's and then PhD at Cambridge, and a momentous year he spent in the US at Columbia during his studies and changing his PhD topic that led to several of his first publications. Duncan reflects on attending the WPSA and ISA conferences and the role of the English School section, and organizing panels with Casper Sylvest. He discusses his books as a 'loose trilogy', how he approaches writing including an intense few weeks in Berlin a few years ago where he finished Dreamworlds. He talks about what he does to unwind, and then spends time on the newest member of their family, Pablo the Poochon!

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 operation in Southern Lebanon. Xymena recalls how a karate injury almost kept her out of going to a university, and how she came to study International Relations. She reflects on what Warsaw was like in the late 1990s, getting her MA in Warsaw when Poland was part of the 2003 'Coalition of the Willing' for the US-led Iraq War. She recalls being on the waitlist, and then attending, European University Institute in Florence for her Phd, and the challenges and opportunities that entailed, eventually working with Prof Fritz Kratochwil. She discusses the experiences she had with Dvora Yanow who 'changed her life' through introducing her to interpretive methods and a network of interpretive 'American Political Scientists' like Friend of the Hayseed Scholar Podcast, Professor Peri Schwartz'Shea. Xymena recalls how she got a job at CEU right after her PhD, getting a Marie Curie fellowship at Aber, how she decompresses via hiking and watching Mixed Martial Arts, and how she approaches editing a journal.

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!