Transformative Podcast

Talking about sex and educating young people about the challenges and questions related to human sexuality is a sensitive and often controversial topic. In this episode, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Agnieszka Kościańska (University of Warsaw) talks to Lukas Becht (RECET) about the rich and fascinating history of sex education in the XX. century with a focus on Poland. It is a story of transformations and conf...

What can translations tell us about the societies in which they are published? In this episode, moderated by Rosamund Johnston (RECET), Dr. Eva Spišiaková (University of Vienna) reflects upon one hundred years of Shakespeare's sonnets in Czech and Slovak translation. Spišiaková uses the "love poems of all love poems" to uncover shifting attitudes towards gender and sexuality in Czechoslovakia, and...

Which factors play a leading role in the transformation and collapse of modern autocracies? In this episode, moderated by Anastassiya Schacht (RECET), our guest Prof. Sergei Guriev (Sciences Po) talks about the methods used by modern autocracies to convince their voters, their relationship with the economy and economic crises, and about what it takes to co-opt the country's elites.    Sergei Gurie...

Milan is a city that is synonymous with industry, as well as with style. In this episode, moderated by Dean Vuletic (RECET), we take a tour of Milan with Prof. Anne-Marie Jeannet as we discuss her research on de-industrializing societies and the political consequences. From the glamorous square of the city centre to the industrial chic of other neighbourhoods, Prof. Jeannet explains how Milan has...

Governments in East Central Europe have long relied on radical neoliberal reforms as a strategy to leave socialism behind. In this episode, moderated by RECET's founding director Philipp Ther, our guest Prof. Dr. Dorothee Bohle discusses how neoliberalism became resilient once again. She examines the relationship between authoritarianism and neoliberalism and argues for a gendered perspective on t...

Is the legacy of dissidence, rather than the legacy of communism, driving the current illiberal turn in some East Central European states' politics? In this episode moderated by Rosamund Johnston (RECET), our guest Michal Kopeček (Institute of Contemporary History, Prague/ Imre Kertész Kolleg, Jena) discusses how dissidents shaped political discourse in the region both before and after the revolut...

Is the era of neoliberal globalism over? In this episode moderated by Prof. Dr. Jannis Panagiotidis (Scientific Director, RECET), our guest Assoc. Prof. Dr. Quinn Slobodian (Wellesley College) considers the history and current state of global capitalist governance and asks what directions it may take in the future. Quinn Slobodian is a historian of modern German and international history with a fo...