Associate Provost and W. Harold Row Professor of Global Politics Jamie Frueh, of Bridgewater College, joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Jamie and Brent have been friends for over 15 years, meeting at the ISA-Northeast conference in 2009. Jamie is also the only (other) person on this podcast besides Brent who is from Iowa; Jamie also hosts his own podcast, The Teaching Curve. Jamie talks about growing up in Des Moines, with parents who both encouraged his curiosities and educational journey. Jamie was on his high school's debate team, which enabled him to travel throughout Midwest a bit. He...

Professor Sebastian Kaempf of the University of Queensland joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast this week. Seb grew up in Germany, with the fall of the Berlin Wall happening when he was entering his teenage years. While it had a big impact on him,  he distinctly remembers his parents’ emotional reactions to that moment. He also was a conscientious objector and thus did not serve in the German military but his service was in some ways even more challenging as he notes here. Seb talks about going to uni in Germany before transferring to the LSE for his Bachelor’s and Masters, heading towards...

 Professor Lene Hansen of the University of Copenhagen likely needs no introduction to most listeners of this podcast. She has worked within what would be called the Copenhagen school or securitization theory, emphasizing within that school the overlooked lens of gender. Her work on discourse analysis is famous for being a key contribution to the development of especially interpretive methods in the 2000s and 2010s, and her more recent work in visual IR and visual/image analysis. She talks about growing up on an island, Langeland or Long Island, off the coast of Denmark, riding horses and...

Huss Banai of Indiana University is an individual Brent considers himself incredibly fortunate to call a friend.  He joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast to tell his amazing story and journey through life and academia. Huss was born in Iran and grew up in Northern Tehran until his family moved to Canada when he was 15. In Iran, Huss and his family experienced the war with Iraq, the fallout from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (his father worked with Afghan refugees during that time), and with a dad who worked for a business promoting Japanese Exports, electronics and video games. The...