University of Washington Jackson School of International Studies

Thea Riofrancos, Associate Professor of Political Science at Providence College, discusses her recent book, Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism (WW Norton and Company, 2025). In conversation with Catalina Caputo, Guadalupe Gonzalez Orozco, Marcus Goodbody, Yunue Moore, and Mary Jose Ortega Ortiz--students from the spring 2026 Latin American Studies Senior--Riofrancos offers insights into...

The Global Sport Lab welcomes three pre-eminent historians of global football in the francophone world to the podcast: Paul Dietschy, professor of contemporary history at the University of Marie and Louis Pasteur and editor of the French journal Football(s): History, Culture, Economy, Society; Stéphane Mourlane, lecturer in modern history and deputy director of the Mediterranean Institute of Socia...

Farnoush Djavaheripour is one of the only women who teaches the ancient Persian sport and practice of Zoorkhaneh (also known as Pahlavāni). Restricted to men within Iran, Djavaheripour is extending the practice to both diasporic and women and gender expansive communities alongside the University of Washington graduate student Sara Modjib Shirazi, who has founded a new non-profit called “We are Zoo...

Having led the US Women’s National Team to one of sport’s iconic victories in the final of the 1999 Women’s World Cup, along with two Olympic gold medals, Briana Scurry shares highs and lows of a remarkable career. One of the first openly gay African American professional athletes in the United States, Scurry’s was ended by a severe concussion. She sits down with Caley Cook, former professional go...

Dr. Courtney M. Cox is the author of “Double Crossover: Gender, Media and Politics in Global Basketball” (Univ. of Illinois Press, 2025) and Associate Professor of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon. She talks about her book, the rapid growth and change – particularly in the experiences of the players – in the WNBA, and the intersections of race, gender, and nation wi...

Lisa Uperesa is the author of the award-winning Gridiron Capital: How American Football Became a Samoan Game (Duke, 2022) and an associate professor of Asian American Studies at UCLA. She sat down with Ron Krabill, Director of the Global Sport Lab, and Ronalei Gasetoto, who is pursuing her Ph. D. in cultural anthropology at UW, to discuss the book, the relationship between the modern diaspora of P...

Dr. Rhema Hokama is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Washington, and previously an Associate Professor of English at Singapore University of Technology and Design. She is the author of Devotional Experience and Erotic Knowledge in the Literary Culture of the English Reformation. Please join us for a conversation on the development of Protestantism and English literary culture...

This podcast features Gönül Tol, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute (MEI), where she focuses on Turkish politics, US-Turkey relations and regional dynamics in the Middle East in conversation with University of Washington Jackson School International Studies Professor Reşat Kasaba, an expert in the history and politics of the Middle East. The discussion focuses on how Turkey’s President R...

This podcast features Milan Vaishnav in conversation with University of Washington Jackson School faculty Radhika Govindrajan and Sunila Kale. Our guest talked about a range of topics including his route to graduate school, how he chose his dissertation topic, mixed-methods research, and public scholarship. Vaishnav is a senior fellow and director of the South Asia Program and the host of the Gran...

Dr. Christopher Tounsel: What is Religious Studies at UW? Dr. Christopher Tounsel is an historian of Sudan and a scholar of Global Blackness who puts “race and religion as political technologies” at the center of his research and teaching. Join us as we unpack what that work means today, on campus and off, from the Mahdist wars of 19th century Sudan to the 2016 election of Donald Trump. Recorded o...

From Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security to founding Women of Color Advancing Peace and Security (WCAPS), Amb. Bonnie Jenkins has led a life and career of service.  In this conversation with Jackson School Director Danny Hoffman and Gates Foundation senior program officer, and former foreign service officer, Heather Hwalek, Amb. Jenkins explores the values and the...

Dr. John-Carlos Perea (Mescalero Apache, Irish, Chicano, German) brings it all to his religious studies scholarship - his role as associate professor and chair of the ethnomusicology department at the UW; his talents as a multi instrumentalist jazz musician and composer; his research into intertribal Native American musical forms, jazz traditions and the work of Creek and Kaw saxophonist Jim Peppe...

U.S. Foreign Service Career Minister (retired) Mark Ward has seen all sides of the U.S. foreign aid, humanitarian assistance, and foreign policy landscape.  In this conversation with Jackson School Director Danny Hoffman, Mark reflects on his career in some of the most difficult environments of the past 30 years; the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Developme...

Evangelicalism is not new in American political life. But the second Trump administration coincides with a surprising development in the role of Christian faith in the nation’s politics. The once fringe notion of Christian Nationalism now sits squarely at the point of intersection of American culture, politics and the economy. Danny Hoffman, Director of the Jackson School of International Studies,...

Dr. Tracie Canada is the author of Tackling the Everyday: Race and Nation in Big-Time College Football (2025) and the Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University. She is a Black feminist anthropologist and ethnographer whose research uses sport to theorize race, kinship and care, gender, and the performing body. Tracie joined Dr. Alvin Logan, Jr., the Director...

Nikita Gicanda is the newly elected Commissioner of Women’s Football for the Rwanda Football Federation (FERWAFA) and the founder of Local Champions Africa, an organization dedicated to the empowerment of women and girls through sport. Nikita sat down in Kigali with Ron Krabill, Director of the Global Sport Lab, and Layan Arrabi, a mathematics major at the University of Washington Bothell who part...

Zaria Court is a newly-opened sports, entertainment, and cultural district located next to Amahoro Stadium and BK Arena (home of the Basketball Africa League) in the heart of Kigali, Rwanda. Zaria Court seeks to become a model for African urban development centered around sports and related activities. Join the Director of the Global Sport Lab, Ron Krabill, as he sits down with Che Rupari, Brand a...

On July 24, 2025, three members of the U.S. Sepak Takraw National Team gave a demonstration and talk at the University of Washington, thanks to support from the UW's Center for Southeast Asia & Its Diasporas. That same day Ron Krabill, Director of the UW Global Sport Lab, sat down with them as well as a software engineer based in Washington, D.C. who played Takraw in Tamil Nadu, India, and the Exe...

On the eve of Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) Football Club’s arrival in Seattle to face the Sounders in their final group match of the Club World Cup, the Director of the UW Global Sport Lab, Ron Krabill, sat down with two French scholars to discuss the European champions and their cultural and political significance within France and worldwide. Stéphane Mourlane (Professor of contemporary history and...

Ron Krabill, University of Washington Global Sport Lab Podcast Host, Director of the Global Sport Lab, and Professor in Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences at UW Bothell, along with Cayley Cook, faculty and Director of Journalism, UW Department of Communication, discuss gender and development and sport in Africa, especially women and girls in soccer, with guest visitor Martha Saavedra. Saavedra is A...

Ron Krabill, Global Sport Lab Podcast Host, Director of the Global Sport Lab, and Professor in Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell, and Danny Hoffmann, Director of the Jackson School of International Studies and co-founder of the Global Sport Lab, interview Markku Jokisipilä, a distinguished professor of history at the University of Turku in Finland and rowin...

In the run-up to the 2026 FIFA Men's Soccer World Cup, Ron Krabill, Global Sport Lab Podcast Host, Director of the Global Sport Lab, and Professor in Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell, along with Jesús Hidalgo, a graduate adviser for the UW's Jackson School of International Studies who teaches a class about soccer and international studies, interview Laurent...

A Jackson School interview with Latin American and Caribbean Studies Alum ‘01 Natalie “Tasha” Kimball, Associate Professor of History at the College of Staten Island, and affiliated faculty at the Graduate Center, both within the City University of New York, on their career and research trajectory in reproductive health care with a particular focus on Latin America. Kimball is the author of “An Op...

Regional Repercussions of the War is a public talk and discussion featuring Marc Lynch, faculty and director of the Project on Middle East Political Science at George Washington University. The event was held and recorded on Feb. 13, 2024 at 5:00 p.m. in Architecture Hall at the University of Washington in Seattle. This event is part of our Winter 2024 War in the Middle East Lecture Series on the...

The 'New Elites' of X: Identifying the Most Influential Accounts Engaged in Hamas/Israel Discourse is a public talk and discussion featuring UW Center for an Informed Public faculty Kate Starbird, Mert Bayar and Mike Caulfield. The event was held and recorded on Feb. 6, 2024 at 5:00 p.m. in the HUB South Ballroom at the University of Washington in Seattle. This event is part of our Winter 2024 War...