Coffee & Cocktails® Podcast

I know in this episode I said I would post it after we released episode 45, but it was such a joy to meet such an inspirational individual that I hope all of our listeners get as much out of this episode as I did recording it. ------------ There are many jobs that deserve higher recognition than they are given, from nursing, to teaching, to safety personnel, all designed to better our society. In...

‘Climate change’ according to Dr Camelia Dewan, is used as a term to attract donor funding, but to what extent does this funding actually help those in need? In this fascinating episode on the Bengal Delta, we take a deep dive into the world of NGOs and explore how short-term projects in the development industry can have a negative effect on the communities most effected by infrastructure interven...

‘Bodily functions’ are not normally brought into discussions meant for the general public. But what happens when those ‘functions’ take place in the workplace and/or around one’s working environment? In this episode with Dr Chiara Cocco, we discuss taboo topics like ‘menstruation’ and ‘breastfeeding’ and why these basic, normal aspects of the reproductive process can be seen as disruptive to the w...

Whenever anyone hears of students who are ‘kicked out’ of school, the responses as a whole tend to be negative towards students who are viewed as ‘troubled’ rather than towards educational government policies that have been put in place. With the UK's Pupil Referral Units (PRUs) showing mixed results, their effectiveness is not always guaranteed, resulting in many students feeling like they are ‘f...

Warning: This episode contains stories involving child sexual abuse. Listener discretion is strongly advised. ‘Stigma’ and ‘silence’ are two powerful reactions when it comes to child sexual abuse, so much so that the lack of response from society has had lasting effects on victims into adulthood. In this important episode with Dr William Tantum of the University of Bristol, we discuss his recent w...

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The West’s understanding of Pakistan is largely based on (social) media portrayals of a country in conflict, effected by terrorism and continued brutality. Women’s rights, it is said, are infringed upon, especially when it comes to education, as evidenced by Malala who survived an attack that almost left her for dead. But what if we were to tell you that there is more to Pakistan than initially me...

According to Eugenia: 'Mexico, a high middle income country, is the place where professionals work more hours than anywhere else in the world (OCDE), and 60% of its population lives in poverty (CONEVAL). Working 8 hours, six days a week, with a daily commute of 3 hours means people are exhausted, and their remaining time is just sufficient to do chores and rest a bit, forget about checking on chil...

The caste system in India is deeply embedded into the historical and psychological foundations of the Indian psyche, so much so that after the post-colonial era it still very much functions as a part of Indian identity. In this episode with Anthropologist Pragati Gupta, she provides us with her personal accounts of what it means to be a person from a marginalized community who has worked their way...

NEW SERIES: Giving Voice to the Voiceless by Dr Ann Wand

In this final episode of our ‘Controversies and Contraband’ series, we sit down with yoga specialist, Dr Patrick McCartney to discuss the somewhat surprising historical origins of yoga and mallakhamb (the wrester’s pole). What originally started as a general interest in postural yoga due to a sustained growth spurt during his teens, by university he became somewhat of a ‘yoga fundamentalist’ and e...

The concept of ‘dark food’, like ‘dark tourism’, is directly linked to consumption and how identities are forged by making sense of the past through present-day cultural memories. In this bonus episode with Alessandra Pino, co-author of A Gothic Cookbook, we discuss her research on understanding dark food through the Cuban legacies of slavery and sugar plantations. And how the ‘recreation of traum...

The history of Western feminism has had a tendency to impose its own world views on non-western women at the expense of allowing other female voices to express their thoughts on freedoms, rights, and religion. In this bonus episode with Sonia Gulzeb Abbasi we discuss concerns surrounding (white) Western feminism and its (un)intentional imposition on Muslim women’s identity in Pakistani and Afghani...

*Apologies for the sound quality of this episode. We were having some difficulties with the mic, but the content is absolutely fine! Just make sure to keep the volume slightly quieter than usual. When Dr Heather Munro initially approached me about her research on Haredi and Hasidic identity in London, New York, and Israel, I completely underestimated the complex web that makes up the ultra-orthodo...

How do we deal with preserving memory when the historical past can be so controversial? In this Patreon-only special release (recorded in August 2021), Dr Hannes Obermair from EURAC Research gives us his perspectives on the role of statues and how South Tyrol’s decision to preserve its Fascist (and Nazi) past led to the creation of a documentation centre located in the basement vault underneath Bo...

When Pompeii was first excavated in the 18th century, the individuals involved in the re-discovery of this coastal town were surprised (or dare I say ‘shocked’) to discover the massive array of erotic male (and female) genitalia scattered throughout the ancient establishment. Considered taboo and eventually locked away into Pompeii’s now famous, ‘Secret Cabinet’, this museum of wonders was closed...

In this episode, lecturer in Pakistan Studies, Sonia Gulzeb Abbasi, takes us through a tour of the background history of travel photography in the Middle East and Africa and its potential link to modern day notions of power and post-colonialism. Nowadays a very common motif for bloggers on social media sites like Instagram, she advises listeners to pay attention to the ethical implications behind...

As promised, Dr Helen Cornish (Goldsmiths, London) is back to discuss the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle, Cornwall. In her talk she explores how contemporary witches navigate the ‘unfamiliar’ by experiencing the uncanny through magical consciousness as part of their occult practice. By focusing on St Nectan’s Glen, the labyrinth of Rocky Valley, and the witch memorial of Joan Wytte, C...

The history of piracy is steeped in legend, full of myth and fantastical stories. But what if I told you that some of these stories are based on actual facts? In this contraband portion of our ‘Controversies and Contraband’ series we explore the hidden world of female pirates through Mary Read, Anne Bonny, and Grace O’Malley, and how their origin stories in England and Ireland led one of them to ‘...

In this month’s bonus episode, Dr Banu Karaca, talks about the darker side of the art world through the eyes of its hidden figures: gallerists, art collectors, and corporate sponsors (sometimes referred to as neo-liberalists) in Istanbul (Turkey) and Berlin (Germany). With the history of art steeped in state violence, Karaca’s anthropological approach to understanding the art world provides us wit...

What are the differences (if any) between cancel versus call-out culture? And what sort of effects can cancel culture have on an individual through the lens of social media? In this one- hour episode, Dr Wand sits down with consulting anthropologist and founder of Culture Contact, Helidth Ravenholm, to discuss the multi-layered consequences of online bullying through social venues like Twitter and...

When serial entrepreneur, Brady Simpson, made the decision to start up and found his own businesses (Simtek and Peanut), he took his years of experience working at Facebook and LinkedIn to discover what it really takes to succeed in the tech industry. In this one-hour interview he sits down with Dr Ann Wand to discuss the ins and outs of the tech industry and how researchers and academics can tran...

Controversies & Contraband series: Alessandra Pino (aka: Allie) is the co-author of ‘A Gothic Cookbook’ and in this episode we explore the hidden world of the Gothic Victorian era. While her book focuses on the ‘relationship between food and the supernatural’, there are other elements to Gothic literature that connect food to violence, the oppressed roles of women, historical suppression, and serv...

In this bonus episode, Dr Ritu Jain dives deeper into her work on disability awareness by discussing her concerns regarding Singapore’s legal interpretations of ‘disabled’ versus ‘abled’ people. In addition, she describes the continued stigma, prejudice, discrimination, and taboo associations that exist for marginalised health communities, including those living with HIV. If you haven’t checked ou...

Every-so-often I do an episode that is very near and dear to my heart. This episode is no exception. In this month’s show for our ‘Controversies and Contraband’ series I talk with historian and Senior Researcher, Dr Hannes Obermair about the history of South Tyrol, Italy’s secret catacomb schools, originally designed with the intent to protect Italy’s German-speaking ethnicity from Italian fascist...