CEU Podcasts

In our last episode, we explore some of the critiques and shortcomings of the Irish Citizens’ Assembly and look into the feasibility of replicating the model in other country contexts.

In episode 2, our team travels to Dublin to talk with experts, politicians, civil society and a few random people in pubs about Ireland’s experiment with deliberative democracy. We’ll give you the scoop on how it came about, how it works in practice and what people think about it.  

In this episode, we chat with governance and rule of law experts to learn more about the challenges to democratic governance on both sides of the Atlantic. We explore whether or not a citizens’ assembly might help rebuild trust democratic processes.

In 2012, the Hungarian government changed the criteria for being an officially recognized church, reducing the list from around 370 to a total of 14 officially recognized churches. A year later, 18 additional religious organizations were granted status as well, bringing the total to 32. Esther Holbrook interviews members of different local minority religious groups to find out more about their com...

There are few countries in the world, where wood plays as important role as in Poland. Less than four decades ago, wooden houses still dominated the landscape of the eastern region Lubelskie, but today they are almost impossible to spot. Two world wars, the socialist regime, fires and local communities’ desire to dismantle any remnants of the past led to widescale removal of wooden dwellings. Even...

The Age of Noise in Britain: Hearing Modernity (University of Illinois Press, 2017) by James G. Mansell brings forward the opportunity to hear modernity and examine how sound shaped the selves of Britons in an age of economic, social and political upheaval. Industrial and technological sounds created anxiety, especially for the middle classes; sound experts were engaged by the state to manage, man...

Tibetans are the best example of a diaspora that is very politically active but not violent, or at least outwardly violent in a different way. The situation in Tibet remains unresolved and the situation of Tibetans living in India is highly problematic, yet they have not resorted to violence in the same kind of way as other diasporas might have. Through their own engagement with their personal and...

The end is nigh! As the Soviet Union veered from attempted military coup to total collapse in 1991, we trace the role which Radio Liberty  played in documenting and influencing these tumultuous events.  In looking at Radio Liberty’s decision to broadcasting Boris Yeltsin’s speeches during the August coup, as well as the somewhat bewildered Radio Liberty broadcasts which went out as the Soviet Unio...

We’re all familiar with the story – in 1989 the USSR collapsed and the path was made for Russia to return to Europe through the acceptance of capitalism and democracy… except that nowadays it would seem that it didn’t quite turn out that way. Many academics have come to the fore to try and explain why it is that Russia behaves the way that it does. But do these analyses unwittingly obscure the obj...

This episode discusses the patterns of radicalization of ordinary citizens during the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the role of various political actors involved in legitimizing the use of political violence by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (referred to as the IRA for greater simplicity) in the eyes of the public. It presents the main roots of the conflict of political loyalties, which...

The nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986 was not just a catastrophic event in terms of its effect upon the environment and the health of those who lived nearby. Some claim that the media coverage of the disaster, and particularly that by Radio Liberty, contributed to the introduction of radical reforms within the Soviet Union that changed it forever – and perhaps even hastened its eventual downfa...

This podcast is a story of Irish America during an exciting time both in Irish and American history. While “The Troubles” were raging in Northern Ireland, USA was experiencing the end of the “melting pot” and the beginning of “cultural mosaic”. Irish-America was one of the groups at the forefront of this transformation and made their presence felt on "The Troubles". Hence, this podcast is an attem...

What can whale songs teach us about queer theory? Marianna Szczygielska and Adriana Qubaia-ova from CEU’s Gender Studies Department interview Eva Hayward and Jack Halberstam about their most recent works. From marine creatures in Aquariums to a rebellious cow in Poland, we discuss captivity, ferality, and wildness as they collude in shaping our human understandings of sexuality and animality. Take...

How did RL adapt to the political shifts of the 1970s, the rise of “détente” and the emergence of human rights as a key narrative affecting the relationship between Communist governments, the West, and the populations of the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc? This episode delves into the ways in which RL covered the world of dissidents, freedom of speech trials and underground literature in the Soviet...

In this short introduction to the series Mate Nikola Tokić, Humanities Initiative Visiting Professor at Central European University’s Department of International Relations, talks about the six episodes produced in his class and the way in which podcasting disrupts teaching and learning with excellent results.

How does the absence of a generally accepted definition on terrorism, codified under international law, affect national policies that target diasporas in host states? The attempt to develop one generally accepted and overall recognized definition of terrorism sparked a heated debate within the international community and the academia. Until February 2018, 14 major international conventions regardi...

On September 16, 1920, an explosion rocked the financial district in New York City; it was the deadliest terrorist attack in the United States up to that point, and would remain so for seventy-five years. The culprit was an Italian anarchist immigrant, and he was part of one of the greatest enemies of the United States government in the early part of the 20th century. Italians came to the United S...

Interviewing as a technique of gaining information is as old as humankind. Talking to people as a form of scientific inquiry about their experiences is fun but also a methodological and theoretical challenge. In the past decades, oral history has become a widely used research method in different disciplines. Given that oral history is a technique and a way of constructing histories this series of...

Can we have sound media that is ecologically sound? Can we fine tune our media production and consumption habits to a greener key? How can an environmental perspective on sound media contribute to our understanding of how media culture is involved in the ecological crisis? These are just some of the questions Jacob Smith is trying to answer in his latest book, Eco-Sonic Media (University of Califo...

Interviewing as a technique of gaining information is as old as humankind. Talking to people as a form of scientific inquiry about their experiences is fun but also a methodological and theoretical challenge. In the past decades, oral history has become a widely used research method in different disciplines. Given that oral history is a technique and a way of constructing histories this series of...

Interviewing as a technique of gaining information is as old as humankind. Talking to people as a form of scientific inquiry about their experiences is fun but also a methodological and theoretical challenge. In the past decades, oral history has become a widely used research method in different disciplines. Given that oral history is a technique and a way of constructing histories this series of...

Interviewing as a technique of gaining information is as old as humankind. Talking to people as a form of scientific inquiry about their experiences is fun but also a methodological and theoretical challenge. In the past decades, oral history has become a widely used research method in different disciplines. Given that oral history is a technique and a way of constructing histories this series of...

Interviewing as a technique of gaining information is as old as humankind. Talking to people as a form of scientific inquiry about their experiences is fun but also a methodological and theoretical challenge. In the past decades, oral history has become a widely used research method in different disciplines. Given that oral history is a technique and a way of constructing histories this series of...

Interviewing as a technique of gaining information is as old as humankind. Talking to people as a form of scientific inquiry about their experiences is fun but also a methodological and theoretical challenge. In the past decades, oral history has become a widely used research method in different disciplines. Given that oral history is a technique and a way of constructing histories this series of...

Interviewing as a technique of gaining information is as old as humankind. Talking to people as a form of scientific inquiry about their experiences is fun but also a methodological and theoretical challenge. In the past decades, oral history has become a widely used research method in different disciplines. Given that oral history is a technique and a way of constructing histories this series of...