Transforming Society podcast

In this episode, George Miller talks to the author of What are Prisons for? , prison inspector and visiting professor of law at Oxford Hindpal Singh Bhui, about why we lock so many people up. Prison populations have increased hugely in the past fifty years and vast sums of money are spent to keep over 11.5 million people behind bars, so you might think there is overwhelming evidence that prison ‘w...

Jessie Abrahams' new book reveals the extent of class inequality in schools in the UK. By telling Jessie's story and that of one of the young people in her research, this episode untangles the role aspiration plays for young people in school and the significance of the different choices that are available to different pupils in different schools. Jessie puts forward ideas for changes that we can m...

In this episode, Richard Kemp speaks with Anna Durnova, one of the guest editors for the Emotions and Society special issue on 'Emotions and the ‘Truths’ of Contentious Politics: Advances in Research on Emotions, Knowledge, and Contemporary Contentious Politics'. They discuss the weaponisation of truth, the important difference between being told you are safe and feeling you are safe and the need...

In this episode, Richard Kemp speaks with Nigel Thrift, author of The Pursuit of Possibility: Redesigning Research Universities , about research universities and what makes them different. They discuss the importance of free speech at universities, the many threats research universities face and what can be done about these threats to ensure a thriving future for these essential institutions. Find...

In this episode, we talk about postracialism and colourblind narratives with Paul Warmington, Visiting Professor at Coventry University, Visiting Research Fellow at Goldsmiths and author of ‘Permanent Racism’. Britain’s current postracial perspectives are facile so we need to reconceptualise critical race theory from a British standpoint. This means foregrounding the concept of ‘permanent racism’...

In this episode, Jess Miles speaks with Nick Gibbs, author of ‘The Muscle Trade’, about the rise in the use of image and performance enhancing drugs, why people take them and how they get them. They talk about how the reasons for people taking these drugs goes beyond sporting skill and physical prowess, the difference between online and offline supply, avenues for future research and ways of...

There has been a growing interest in talking about menopause over the last decade, but the impact is still rarely discussed in management and organisation studies, despite having profound implications in this area. In this episode of the Transforming Society podcast, Jess Miles speaks with Vanessa Beck and Jo Brewis, co-editors of ‘Menopause Transitions and the Workplace’. They discuss how the men...

In this episode, Ann-Marie Bathmaker, co-author of The Degree Generation: The Making of Unequal Graduate Lives , talks about the transition to the graduate labour market, examined through the eyes of a cohort of middle-class and working-class young people. They discuss the changing nature of the graduate labour market, the promise of upward mobility that universities and governments failed to deli...

In this episode of the Transforming Society podcast, Jess Miles speaks with Alison Young, author of Unchecked Power , about the growth of governmental power and erosion of checks and balances over the last 4 years.  They discuss the difference between constitution and law, how the ‘will of the people’ is being homogenised all over the world and how a lack of knowledge and understanding about...

In this episode of the Transforming Society podcast, Jess Miles speaks with Olivier De Schutter, Hugh Frazer, Anne-Catherine Guio and Eric Marlier, authors of The Escape From Poverty , about child poverty and intergenerational poverty and things we can do as individuals to make change. They talk about the evidence in the book, how poverty impacts developed and developing countries differently and...

In this episode of the Transforming Society podcast, Rebecca Megson-Smith speaks to Arve Hansen, Ulrikke Wethal, Sophia Efstathiou and Johannes Volden, editors of the special issue of Consumption and Society called ‘Towards Less Meat-intensive Diets? Exploring Everyday Practices of Meat Consumption, Reduction and Substitution’.  They discuss the pressing need for us to reconsider our relation...

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In this episode of the Transforming Society podcast, Jess Miles speaks with Julia Mortimer, Journals Director and Head of Open Access at Bristol University Press. They discuss recent developments in Open Access, including funder mandates, community-led models and the direction Bristol University Press are heading in. In addition, they offer advice for authors, and potential authors, for navig...

In this episode of the Transforming Society podcast, Steve Cooke, author of What Are Animal Rights For? , talks with George Miller about how the field of animal rights evolved – and continues to evolve as advances in the scientific understanding of animals’ lives expand the rights claims made on their behalf.  Philosophy, Steve suggests, has a critical role to play in proposing what a good fu...

In this episode of the Transforming Society podcast, Jess Miles speaks with Malcolm Evans, former Chair of the UN Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture and author of Tackling Torture: Prevention in Practice . They discuss the traps we fall into when talking about torture, including the disturbing normalisation of torture in television and film, why the distinction between torture and inhuman t...

Jess Miles speaks with Gerry Mitchell and Marcos González Hernando, authors of ‘Uncomfortably off: Why the top 10% of earners should care about inequality’. Wealth no longer guarantees security. Gerry and Marcos explain why it's time for higher earners to reset their attitudes towards the lives of others and reexamine their relationship with the private sector, public services and the state. They...

In this episode of the Transforming Society podcast, Richard Kemp speaks with Ed Atkins, author of 'A Just Energy Transition: Getting Decarbonisation Right in a Time of Crisis', about what is needed for an energy transition to be just. They discuss the need to ensure decarbonisation doesn't come at the expense of already marginalised communities, the role that green jobs will play and the importan...

In this episode, Richard Kemp speaks to people from both sides of the Universal Basic Income (UBI) debate from a recent issue of the Journal of Poverty and Social Justice. Howard Robert Reed and Matthew Thomas Johnson argue that UBI is affordable and feasible, whereas Donald Hirsch believes the necessary funds for UBI could be used to cut poverty in more targeted ways. They explore the different U...

In this final short conversation with Jack McDonald, author of 'What is War for?', we turn to the part played by technology in war. There’s long been a technological aspect to war, not just in the development of ever more deadly weapons, but also in the way civilian technology, such as railway networks and the telegraph, have shaped the conduct of war. Today, in the era of drones and smartphones,...

Robin Sen and Christian Kerr, authors of 'The Future of Children’s Care', speak to Jess Miles about the recent 'once in a generation' MacAlister Review of Childrens Social Care in England. They discuss the problem of how reviews are commissioned and carried out, omissions in the report and the need for co-production and the need for dissent to stand up for people with less power. What does the fut...

What are state harms? What are the formal and informal ways they are enacted? How can solidarity, denunciation and resistance challenge state harm and what opportunities and openings for change exist? Federica Rossi and Chris Magill are guest editors of a themed section on state harms in the latest issue of 'Justice, Power and Resistance'. In this episode, they speak to Jess Miles about what state...

Cybersecurity is about identifying something you want to protect and exercising power in order to preserve it, Tim Stevens says in this, the last of three short conversations about his new book, 'What is Cybersecurity for?'. In this episode, we focus on cybersecurity’s political dimensions, including interstate competition that could manifest as cyberwarfare, the reasons why the world has not (yet...

So-called tainted donations have become a very real problem for many charities and organizations: when is it wrong to accept a donation because of how the money was made? What if the money was made in the distant past, when different ethical values prevailed? And if a donor uses their money to whitewash a dubious reputation, is that just something they should accept as a small price to pay for the...

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Vladimir Putin very deliberately referred to it as a ‘special military operation’, not an act of war. He’s far from unique in refusing to call a war by its name; calling a conflict a war has consequences. And over the course of history, very different types of conflict have had the label applied to, or denied, them. In this, the second of three short c...

In this episode, Richard Kemp speaks with Lucy Easthope and Kandida Purnell, two of the co-editors of 'When This Is Over', about the pandemic and its long lasting impact. They discuss why it was important to have different perspectives and content beyond academic essays, the effect increasingly strict immigration laws had on asylum seekers during the pandemic and whether we've seen the full extent...