Orders in Decay

The 1981 hunger strikes in Northern Ireland were more than a political protest. They were lived, contested, and remembered in deeply personal ways. The hunger strikes reshaped politics, identity, and memory in Northern Ireland and beyond. With Professors Niall O Dochartaigh and Marie Breen-Smyth, the podcast revisits the events, exploring escalation, symbolism, public reaction, and the lasting imp...

The podcast explores the disappearance of 43 students in Mexico, and the Ayotzinapa Protests which have unfolded over the last decade.

#49: Racialised Traffic Stops and the Killing of Philando Castile by General

Produced by Ollie Sanderson-Nichols: Following the incendiary revelations in 2011 that members of the Metropolitan Police Service, posing as activists, had been tasked with implanting themselves within protest groups and social movements between the years of 1968 and 2010, producer Ollie Sanderson-Nichols explores the history and technique of police infiltration in the UK, and its impacts on the p...

Producer Precious Odunaiya explains that in popular culture, vigilantes are imagined as heroes who fight for a form of justice that the legal system fails to achieve. Drawing on Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, this podcast investigates the thin line between vigilantism and villainy, as a way to grasp the contemporary state of exception. Thanks to Dr Erica McCrystal, Montclair State Univer...

Producer Lucy Knollys explores the movement of the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. During the Argentinian ‘Dirty War’ 1976-83, around 30,000 people were disappeared by the state. Mothers took to the streets to demand justice for their missing children and grandchildren. With Professor Fernando J Bosco, the podcast explores how the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo repurposed traditional identities to giv...

Producer Zuzu Walker explores the significance of costume in political protest. With help from Prof Andy Lavender, the podcast specifically examines the gilet jaunes (yellow Vests) used across the French protests from 2018-2021. Using the work of Ernesto Laclau and Jacques Ranciére, this podcast explores the duality of symbols, in seeing how the gilet jaune could be embued with masses of demands,...

#44 The Dying Art Of Protesting by General

Producer Ashvin Kapilan explores the use of police power in the UK, focussing on the controversial technique of 'kettling'. Featuring the work of Prof Mark Neocleous, the podcast exposes how the concept of security is often used to increase and entrench police power power at worrying levels. Special thank you to Professor Mark Neocleous for agreeing to be interviewed for the purposes of the produc...

Producer: Maya Viswa. This podcast will explore the 26 year Sri Lankan Civil War and its’ repercussions in modern day Sri Lanka. It will focus on the concept of disappearance as a symbol of a never ending conflict. It connects together a lack of closure, lack of truth and a mask of the true brutality that occurred. Through exploring the history of the Sri Lankan civil war, its’ modern day repercus...

Produced by Zosha Elleston, the podcast will explore and analyse the 1921 Tulsa riots and massacre. Shooting, theft and unlawful detention were just some of the atrocities that arose from the conflict between the prosperous black neighbourhood and the white neighbourhood within Tulsa. We will explore systemic racism and racial segregation. I want to sincerely thank Professor Kimberly Fain and Prof...

Producer Eva Djukic explains that it’s difficult to imagine a world in which AIDS isn’t normalised. This podcast tells the untold struggle that non-hegemonic classes went through to thrust AIDS onto the political agenda. Not everyone can remain anaesthetised to public order – for the suspect population it becomes a matter of life and death. This podcast explores the social and political pedagogies...

Sacha Houghton: One murder victim. Two detectives. Three suspects.... Except, this time, there’s no murder victim. In this unconventional and dry-humoured podcast, you will determine the cause of riots the only way you know how - via a murder mystery. In order to solve the puzzle, the impact of the police, crowd psychology, and grievance shall all be considered, leading to a startling conclusion a...

Catherine Nkuo: Racism continues to play a significant role in the arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment of black citizens. This podcast explores the question of whether there is systematic racism in US law enforcement, and how this facilitates mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex in America. It analyses the emergence of the US carceral state and how policing has become an ongoing...

Celine Dib: This podcast will centre around the protests that began in October 2019 in Beirut, Lebanon. The aim of the protests, or ‘Al-Thawra’ in arabic, is the decentralisation and uprooting of Lebanon’s corrupt government. Women have been an essential part of the revolution. Mothers, daughters and even grandmothers have been seen on the frontlines. As the protests grew in size, photographs spre...

Zahra Abdul-Malik: Apartheid remains. Even decades after its formal end, it is still interwoven in South African politics. This podcast explores the spatial politics of South Africa's transition from apartheid. It explores the history of land dispossession to establish the strong relationship between geographic space and inequality. It analyses how promises from the post-apartheid government and c...

Andrada Tudose: After nine days of violent protests and over one thousand deaths, the Romanian Revolution finally ended with the execution of the dictator, on 25th December 1989. Many years after the fall of the regime, evidence has come to the surface that manipulation techniques have been used on the population in order to achieve chaos during the revolution. So, were the events as simple as pre...

Alaa Fawaz: The remnants of the Lebanese Civil War and its wounds remain visible in Lebanon today. In August 2020, the devastating Beirut port explosion caused the death of over 200 hundred people in the capital city and shook the nation to its core. Yet, the process of mourning has been interrupted by the spread of the pandemic, unprecedented economic crisis and social injustice. Alaa Hatim Fawaz...

Emma Baker produces a podcast on legal abortion in Argentina and the social movements which lead to this change. From colonial influences on gender norms and the strong Catholic Church that came with the Spanish colonisers, to women’s rights developments post-WW2 suddenly brought to a halt by the military dictatorship, this podcast episode explores the long way that Argentinian women had to come t...

Producer: Esther Ofulue. The negative consequences that flow from the abundance of crude oil in this region has been popularly termed as “The Niger Delta Conflict”. However, what this podcast aims to show is that whilst oil is a key component of this conflict, it over simplifies what is in effect a multi-layered conflict. There is not just a singular conflict in the Delta, there are conflicts. Fro...

Producer: Linzi Bandtock: Not your average war story. An expose of the racial, class and gendered inequity that was shrouded within the Vietnam wars anti-war movement. Through the exploration of civil disobedience and the student movement, I uncover the history of the social struggles of those not fighting in the war; but fighting to get out of fighting.

Producer: Hubbab Nasir: Criminals, lazy looters and the mindless underclass; this was the narrative pushed by numerous politicians and academics after the 2011 UK riots. For many, the riots simply boiled down to greed. However, the problem with this perspective is that the spacial dynamics, reactions, and aftermath of the riots reveal a struggle for control between the people and state. The riots...

Ben Potgieter: The Sea Shepherds are a grey area phenomenon. Operating on the high seas their direct action challenges states on the international stage, an arena traditionally off-limits for non-state actors. This podcast looks at the Sea Shepherds through the lens of their iconic anti-whaling campaigns against Japanese whalers, hoping to make sense of their unique form of international disorder.

Ria Dogra: On the 14th August, 1969, British soldiers took to the streets of Northern Ireland to de-escalate ongoing tensions between Catholics and Protestants. With their arrival came a new glimmer of hope. However, this sentiment did not last long. This podcast explores how the British state wrestled carelessly and negligently with the predicament of how to combat a violent and resilient campaig...

Producer: Kush Popat. In 1965, Indonesia underwent a seismic period of societal upheaval following a genocide which culled the population by more than 500,000. Freemen roamed freely as gangsters, enlisted by the government to commit incomprehensibly horrific crimes, to murder without repercussion on an industrial scale. Without a doubt, such banal crimes cast a bleak comment on the whole of societ...