Sustainability Matters

In addition to battling poverty, malnutrition, and disease, African countries today find themselves also having to fend off the numerous perils of climate change. The African problem is unique— socioeconomic development is crucial, but that also shouldn’t come at the cost of environmental destruction.  In this episode, Dr Robin Attfield, Professor Emeritus at the School of English, Communication a...

Jewish religious architecture is central to the Jewish religion. Across the centuries, Jewish temples and synagogues have been treated as symbols of hope, representations of collective memory, and focal points of conflict. They are built around the Jewish way of life and in turn, define it.  What are the foundations of Jewish architecture? And what cultures and ideologies have shaped it? With part...

From the time of his introduction in the Detective Comics in 1940s, the Joker is a character that has both fascinated and repelled the collective psyche of the fans of the comic subculture and beyond. In a new book titled “ The Sign of the Joker: The Clown Prince of Crime as a Sign” published in the Brill Research Perspectives series, Joel West of the University of Toronto, Canada, analyzes the hi...

In 1999, the Organization of African Unity cited dissatisfaction with the solely “global” approach that the UN had applied in their International Decade for Disabled Persons (1983–1992), and declared an African Decade of Persons with Disabilities (1999–2009) to explore “local” approaches.  Was the UN’s approach truly detached from the ground reality? In this podcast, Sam De Schutter discusses his...

The current neoliberal era has seen a paradigm shift in terms of economic liberalization , such as policies on privatization , deregulation , and globalization . Although neoliberalization promises to lessen the burden on government entities to provide welfare, it has evidently caused a greater economic and political divide, especially in advanced capitalist states.  In part 2 of this podcast epis...

The current neoliberal era has seen a paradigm shift in terms of economic liberalization , such as policies on privatization , deregulation , and globalization . Although neoliberalization promises to lessen the burden on government entities to provide welfare, it has evidently caused a greater economic and political divide, especially in advanced capitalist states.  In part 1 of this podcast epis...

Modern science uses the “randomized controlled trial”—whereby people are randomly allocated either the drug or a placebo—as a gold standard to find out whether a newly discovered drug works.  In this podcast, Dr. Martin Edwards, a general practitioner and retired clinician affiliated to the University of London, discusses the British Medical Research Council’s exploitation of the term “controlled”...

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has received unprecedented media coverage in the past 3 months. A large part of this coverage includes comparisons of the ongoing crisis to some major crises of the past, including the SARS epidemic of 2002-2003. In a new study titled “ When the Analogy Breaks: Historical References in Flemish News Media at the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic” published in Brill’s Journ...

In German law, a person strongly suspected of having committed a crime can be placed in pretrial detention; but a certain percentage of such people are ultimately acquitted.  In this podcast, Dr. Jorg Kinzig, Director of the Institute of Criminology, University of Tubingen, discusses his explorations of why this is. What do acquittals entail? Does Germany need a system and policy change? Dr. Kinzi...

Selective breeding of dogs currently helps meet the high demand for purebred dogs, but there are concerns about the ethicality of this practice. In this podcast, Dr. Candace C. Croney of Purdue University talks about commercial breeding practices in the United States, social opposition to the practice, and the potential consequences of its outright abolition on the beings central to the discussion...

Defence lawyers in adversarial legal systems are obligated to remain loyal to their clients, irrespective of the client or the crime. In such cases, lawyers are expected to manage inappropriate emotions to ensure conformity to the emotional regime of law, thereby making the job emotionally demanding. Lisa Flower from Lund University, Sweden, in her study titled “ Emotional Defence Lawyers”, publis...

Technological advancement through the 20th century has allowed religious leaders to broaden their reach, first through print, then televangelism, and now, social media.  In this podcast, Dr Ryan P. Burge, of the Eastern Illinois University, discusses how religious leaders use twitter today, whether successful tweeting means having conversations, and the extent to which evangelicals engage with pol...

Over decades, the Yoruba community of southwest Nigeria has thrived as an inter-religious community, balancing Christianity, Islam, and the ways of a modern and secular globalized world.  In this episode, Dr. Adeyemi Balogun, from the University of Bayreuth in Germany, explores the fabric of the Yoruba society in terms of the founding and development of the Muslim Students’ Society of Nigeria, the...

The most intractable conflict in recent times is the Syrian Civil War: it has caused prolonged tensions, severe destruction, and devastating consequences and, despite several peacemaking efforts, has only escalated over time. How this conflict—which started out with the arrest of a few students—reached a state of intractability is much more nuanced than previously believed. Siniša Vuković and Dian...

The infamous 2011 uprisings in Arab countries put their diplomats under scrutiny: they faced unprecedented political situations that could not be resolved through regular policies. This caused a dramatic shift in how diplomats perceived and responded to political crises, majorly affecting their decision-making abilities.  Judit Kuschnitzki, a PhD student at the Department of Geography, University...

Revisionism, a form of literary criticism, is an integral part of scholarly research, and revisionists often find themselves challenging the orthodox views held by scholars before their time. In Arabo-Islamic writing, modern scholars often tend to neglect traditional scholarly commentary, such as from the Mamlūk and Ottoman periods—two critical periods in the history of Arabic literature.  Dr Adam...

Despite the post-Holocaust UN convention to ensure the protection of minority communities globally, the International community has failed to notice the signs of the Rohingya genocide, but what stopped them from taking subsequent action so long after the atrocity? Who really were responsible? And what impact do the continuing campaigns by the displaced Rohingya and international civil society have...

Governing the world—A critical look at the current state of global governance We live in a time of profound global crises. So, who exactly is responsible for identifying global solutions? Since there is no common world government, global issues are usually addressed by certain international institutions or organizations that develop laws, frameworks, and policies—a phenomenon called “global govern...

Brexit: is Britain left out in the cold? The new political sciences journal Diplomatica , published by Brill, explores the theme of diplomacy in international relations with special focus on Brexit and its implications for Britain, through some insightful articles. Dr Giles Scott-Smith, professor of New Diplomatic History at Leiden University and editor of Diplomatica , discusses these articles an...

Brexit: is Britain left out in the cold? The new political sciences journal Diplomatica , published by Brill, explores the theme of diplomacy in international relations with special focus on Brexit and its implications for Britain, through some insightful articles. Dr Giles Scott-Smith, professor of New Diplomatic History at Leiden University and editor of Diplomatica , discusses these articles an...

Girls Are Also People of the Holy Qur’an Jun Akiba, Associate Professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, discusses Muslim girls’ education in Ottoman Istanbul during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Through the extensive use of archival and narrative sources, Akiba demonstrates, in his article published in the Brill journal Hawwa , that girls in pre-Tanzimat Istanb...

The person in the photograph of a thirteen-year-old Vincent Van Gogh What did the influential Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh actually look like? Popular culture and media have propagated the belief that there have been only two photographs of Vincent Van Gogh himself. If his written exchanges are to be believed, Vincent despised self-portrait photography. However, a recent breakthrough study in th...