The Duck of Minerva

Professor Harman joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. She starts off discussing with Brent her childhood and growing up on a farm in Buckinghamshire in SE England, her interests and aspirations during that time and the family dynamics regarding politics and who was expected to take over the farm each generation. She had a gap year, then went to Manchester for undergrad and graduate training, got into global public health, political economy, and traveled to Tanzania, and then as she tells it was able to get a job in London at City University after approaching some folks from there when they...

Professor Rebecca Adler-Nissen joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Professor Adler-Nissen is a proflic scholar known for her work on diplomacy, integration, practice theory, and her deep knowledge and use of social theory. She talks to Brent about growing up in Denmark, but also Israel and the United States. Before going to uni, Rebecca spent some time working on boats, sailing at one point to the Canary Islands where she looked for more work at the age of 18. She eventually returned to Europe, attending both the University of Copenhagen and Sciences Po. Rebecca went to Copenhagen as well for...

In this episode, Dr. Toni Haastrup of the University of Stirling joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Dr. Haastrup was born in Aberdeen, but moved  to Nigeria when she was very young. She talks about primary and then secondary school there, the decisions she had to make early on about language training in the schools, and then her family’s move to California during the last part of high school. She discusses going to Las Positas in California, and then UC Davis, where she pursued a degree in IR, with a minor in Political Science, and her decision to go to University of Cape Town in South...

Professor Francois Debrix of Virginia Tech University joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Francois grew up in France, attending college there with degrees in Spanish and English, and then International Law, Political Science and Diplomatic History. An exchange program through the University of Strasbourg brought Francois to the US and Purdue, where he pursued his Master's, and then PhD under the supervision of Cynthia Weber. Professor Debrix talks about his interest in ideology that led to his dissertation and first book, Re-envisioning Peacekeeping. That book in part helped land him the...