The Diplomat's Cabinet

Julia Stamm, founder of She Shapes AI, joins host Maria Luísa Moreira to talk about the trust gap most governments are still ignoring, what biased AI systems cost in concrete, measurable terms, and the economic case for building inclusion into technology development from the start, rather than retrofitting it later. A conversation on who gets a say in shaping the systems increasingly shaping all o...

Behind every NATO summit's declarations of unity, the real story often lies in what goes unsaid. Marta Mucznik, senior EU analyst at the International Crisis Group, joins host Maria Luísa Moreira to unpack what the Hague summit left unresolved: looming U.S. troop reductions, Europe's uneven defence spending, Ukraine's elusive security guarantees, and the quiet rise of ad-hoc coalitions of the will...

Ambika Vishwanath, founder director of the Kubernein Initiative and a DFAT-funded research fellow at La Trobe Asia, joins host Maria Luísa Moreira to examine feminist foreign policy's unfinished promise and the alternative approach India has taken, one that is deliberately inclusive in practice without adopting the label. The conversation looks at the limits of exporting global frameworks without...

Ricardo Borges de Castro, EU affairs analyst and foresight expert, joins host Maria Luísa Moreira to explain what strategic foresight is actually for, and why democracies so consistently struggle to plan beyond the next crisis. The conversation covers why permacrisis stopped being a useful buzzword some time ago, why foresight exercises fail without real political translation into policy, and how...

Across Europe, growing numbers of young men are drawn to anti-feminist and far-right political narratives, and the reasons are as much economic as cultural. Javier Carbonell, policy analyst at the European Policy Centre, joins host Maria Luísa Moreira to unpack his research on the collapse of the traditional provider role, rising job insecurity and downward mobility, and how that economic frustrat...

Ahead of the 2025 NATO summit in The Hague, with President Trump in attendance, long-standing questions about the alliance's core guarantee were gaining new urgency. Foreign policy analyst Luka Ignac joins host Maria Luísa Moreira to discuss the political mood heading into the summit, what a push for five percent defence spending really signals, and the risk of a two-tier alliance emerging if U.S....

Extreme weather keeps intensifying, yet mainstream political parties still hesitate to name climate change as the cause, let alone build it into their platforms. António Valentim, political scientist and assistant professor at the London School of Economics, joins host Maria Luísa Moreira to explain why climate shocks so rarely translate into lasting political shifts, why prevention remains a hard...

What happens when the traditional path through foreign affairs institutions stops making sense? Sofiia Shevchuk, the Ukrainian founder of the consultancy VONA and the NGO The Tide, talks with host Maria Luísa Moreira about walking away from NATO and the European Parliament to build something of her own, what a genuinely non-linear career in international relations looks like in practice, and why t...

When Germany's 2025 coalition agreement was published, one striking detail was what it left out: feminist foreign policy, a framework the previous government had built into its diplomatic strategy, disappeared from the text entirely. Leonie Stamm, research fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations, joins host Maria Luísa Moreira to ask what that omission signals in the current political cl...

Local newsrooms are closing across the country, mainstream trust in media keeps falling, and the consequences for civic life are rarely treated as urgent. Political scientist and New Bedford Light co-founder Daniela Melo joins host Maria Luísa Moreira to make the case that community journalism, rather than national coverage, may be democracy's most underrated line of defence. The conversation cove...

Women hold roughly a fifth of ambassadorial posts worldwide, a figure that has barely moved in years, and one that says as much about where women are posted as about how many make it to the top. Dr. Sara Chehab, senior research fellow at the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy (AGDA) and lead researcher behind the Women in Diplomacy Index, joins host Maria Luísa Moreira to unpack the barriers still s...

In the inaugural episode of this podcast, host Maria Luísa Moreira speaks with foreign policy specialist Marissa Conway about the glass cliff phenomenon, the pattern by which women are handed power at the moment an institution or campaign is most likely to fail, as Kamala Harris entered the 2024 U.S. presidential race. The conversation looks at the structural pressures shaping how Harris's candida...