The Fletcher Forum Podcast

The Self-Help Group movement that began in South Asia has now proliferated across developing countries of the world. Seen as a means of women's financial and social empowerment, SHGs have been a popular development intervention. In this conversation with Dr. Michael Woolcock, Lead Social Scientist at the World Bank and  Adjunct Lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, we delve into the history of S...

This podcast features Jordan Strouse, a 3rd year Fulbright grantee in Taiwan who joins the forum to comment on the intersections of linguistic interplay and exchange in Taiwan. The conversation also includes his commentary on Taiwan's bilingual 2030 policy and the challenges of teaching English in an environment where students might speak any of 5 languages natively

A podcast with Ian Lesser, Vice President of the German Marshall Fund of the United States discussing the future of European Security from an American perspective. If the Helsinki Accords have been abandoned with the war in Ukraine, can Europe replace them with something new? Throughout European history, the neutral countries have played a large role in this, by tying great powers together or hold...

The 2022 Fifa World Cup was significant in many ways. As Lionel Messi lifted the long elusive trophy, controversy was not far. One of the many discussions around the Cup was on the role of Qatar as the host. We try to go deeper into the many international relations controversies from the view of those in the Global South. 

We explore the question of whether the United States is colonizing knowledge through international students. We are joined by two experts on the topic: Maria Carolina Sintura ( Sintu ) is a teacher and Ph. D. student in the English Department at UCSB. Her research brings together the Legal Humanities, Critical University Studies, Critical Race Theory, and Women of Color Feminisms as she studies th...

The Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda is a UN framework that promotes women's participation in all aspects of peace and security efforts. It is based on four pillars: participation, protection, prevention, and relief and recovery. Despite significant progress, there are still several challenges to its effective implementation, including a lack of political will, inadequate funding, limited p...

In this first episode, Sarthak talks to David about the concept of digital public infrastructures, its role in the digital economy, and how is it different from the traditional digital development approaches. Our guest for the episode is David Eaves, who's a thought leader in the DPI and DPG space.  David Eaves is an Associate Professor and Deputy Co-Director of the Institute for Innovation and Pu...

How to End Global Poverty? In this engaging fireside chat, Scott MacMillan, author of Hope Over Fate: Sire Fazle Hasan Abed and the Science of Ending Global Poverty, and Dr Alnoor Ebrahim, Professor of Management at the Fletcher School, talk about the story of BRAC, the world's largest NGO, and its founder Sir Fazle Hasan Abed. Through a detailed discussion on his journey, motivations and leadersh...

The podcast covers the role media plays in raising public awareness of key issues while also discussing the risks of conspiracy theories and misinformation. It tries to understand the different ways media can be used as a platform in climate change discussion. Thereby, we look at the need for understanding the criticality and methods of engaging in climate communication, especially in the global s...

In this episode, we explore Artificial Intelligence (AI) and what gender has to do with it. Our staff editor, Paola talks to Kelly Chen, who shares her work and perspectives with us and gives us a complete introduction to Gender and AI.  Kelly Chen is an interdisciplinary artist working and living in Boston, Massachusetts. She works in moving images, sonic installations, and software to reveal the...

Feminist Foreign Policy seeks to incorporate a gender and human rights perspective into international foreign affairs and policy. This episode discusses what feminist foreign policy looks like in different countries, its challenges, and how it may look in the future. Our staff editor, Paola interviews Daniela Philipson, Peace and Security Ph. D. Scholar at Monash University. She has authored sever...

In this Fletcher Forum podcast episode our staff editor, Hasan Towhid interviews Rear Admiral Md. Khurshid Alam (Retd) has served as the President of the International Seabed Authority Council and represented many other illustrious offices.  They talk about peace and maritime security issues in the Indo-Pacific while exploring the broader universe of armed conflict at sea. 

The 27th session of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change - COP27 - is the world's most important conference on climate. The episode explores how diversity and inclusion look at COP. What challenges exist? What has been done? And what can be better for making it a space with diverse voices and representation?   The speakers for this episode were:  ...

In today's episode, I talk about "Why women in Latin America should care about what is happening in Iran?" I interview Belen Torchiaro, an Argentinian political science major, Muslim, feminist, and women's rights activist. The episode is hosted in Spanish. You can follow Belen on social media as  @BeluTorch This episode of The Gendering International Relations Podcast was sponsored by  The Fletche...

In this first Fletcher Forum Fireside Chat, Dr. Jonathan Donner and Dr. Pramod Varma talk about an open protocol approach to counter bigtech monopoly in digital commerce towards making it more inclusive for micro-enterprises. Dr. Varma elaborates on India's journey so far in democratizing access to public services through open technology, and the more recent efforts to demonopolize digital commerc...

In this episode, Princess Anene-Maidoh speaks with two Colombian feminist activists Laura Vasquez and Valeria Surc who are part of a feminist network in Bogota called Somos Un Rostro Colectivo (We are a collective face). They discuss the causes the group advocates for, their organizing tactics, and the methods they use in dealing with opposition.  This week's interviewees: Laura Vasquez and Valeri...

In this episode, the Disobedience podcast dives into the Invasion Day protests in Australia. We discuss the role that indigenous women play in the fight for liberation and the power of representation in the media.    This episode's interviewee: Chelsea Watego    Chelsea Watego (formerly Bond) is a Munanjahli and South Sea Islander woman with over 20 years of experience working within Indigenous he...

In this episode, the Disobedience podcast in collaboration with the Fletcher Forum podcast explores the Egba women's revolt - a feminist anti-colonial movement that took place in the late 1940s in Abeokuta, a town in southwest Nigeria. We discuss the various tactics used by the women in protesting the British colonial government as well as the erasure of women's liberation movements in Nigeria. Th...

As the war in Ukraine approaches its fourth week, many Western commentators are still wondering why Russian President Vladimir Putin chose a full-scale invasion, and why now. In this podcast, Kiana Nedele sits down with Professor Christopher Miller, head of the Fletcher School's Russia/Eurasia Program, to work through these questions and more. Professor Miller brings his years of experience workin...

Bangladesh currently hosts around 1.1 million Rohingya Muslim Minorities from Myanmar. The Rohingya people have faced decades of systematic discrimination, statelessness, and targeted violence in Rakhine State, Myanmar. Such persecution forced them to come to Bangladesh for many years, particularly in August 2017. In this episode, H. E. Ambassador Ms. Rabab Fatima, Permanent Representative of Bang...

COVID19 was a crisis that blurred the boundaries between state control and civil liberties. Technology solutions played a vital role in curbing the spread like contact tracing apps, telemedicine, vaccine scheduling and digital vaccination certificates. But it came with a lot of potential caveats like privacy invasions, state surveillance, and digital divide.    In this first episode, our host Sart...

Zubair Torwali  is a community activist, linguist and educator based in Bahrain, Pakistan who has sought to preserve and promote Pakistan's Dardic cultures and languages. He has authored and supervised a number of books in and about  Torwali . In this episode, he speaks with Elizabeth Dykstra-McCarthy about hydropower development in the Swat valley, its impact on the indigenous Torwali people and...

Jonathan Regnier interviews Cheyanne Scharbatke-Church and Diana Chigas, the co-directors of  Corruption Justice and Legitimacy Program (CJL) to discuss why anti-corruption programming needs to engage with social norms and what CJL is currently doing to shift social norms from the periphery to a central component of corruption analysis and anti-corruption strategy.

Dr. Courtney J. Fung is an assistant professor of International Relations in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong, and holds a PhD in International Relations from the Fletcher School where she was awarded the Peter Ackerman Dissertation Prize for her doctoral thesis. In this podcast, we discuss her latest book, China and Intervention at the UN Securit...

As a Managing Director at Deloitte Consulting, Paul Magill is an expert in growth strategy, marketing, and digital transformation. He recently came by Fletcher to discuss their latest research on organic growth and discuss the implications -- for companies, as well as for individuals planning their future careers. Listen to learn about these findings!