The Hayseed Scholar Podcast

Professor Jarrod Hayes joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Jarrod was born in Colorado, but moved to Utah at a young age and grew up there for a bit before relocating with his mother to just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. In high school, he found he enjoyed doing research especially with science and technology, and so he went to the University of Colorado to pursue a degree in Astrophysics. But at Colorado he also enjoyed studying International Relations because it seemed to cover the 'big things' he had long enjoyed thinking about (a la Carl Sagan). He would get a PhD at USC, working with Pat James, and realized at an ISA meeting that he wanted to divert from going into the government and foreign service to instead pursue a career in academia. Jarrod talks about his time at OU in Norman, then moving back to Atlanta and a job at Georgia Tech where he got promoted and tenured. He and his wife Professor Janelle Knox-Hayes would end up in Cambridge where they are today with their beloved daughters and dog. Jarrod concludes the show by discussing with Brent his love of weightlifting, hobbies with his daughters, how he approaches writing, and what it has been like for him and Professor Knox-Hayes to be the Heads of a Residence House, Burton Conner, at MIT.

Dr. Oumar Ba of Cornell University visits the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Dr. Ba grew up in Senegal, attending his first school at an early age near the Senegal-Mauritania border. He developed an interest in politics in high school and at his first university (Cheik Anna Diop in Dakar) where he pursued Geography. Oumar moved to the United States in early 2001, taking a Greyhound Bus from New York to Ohio. Following a series of jobs, including one at an auto manufacturing plant, he would return to academia pursuing a Master's in International Affairs and Political Science at Ohio University. It was there he worked on his thesis, exploring topics in International Law under the guidance of Professor Andrew Ross. He then went to Gainesville to pursue his PhD, and where he met friend of the pod Professor Aida Hozic. Dr. Ba reflects on his time at Morehouse College, an HBCU where he worked in his first tenure track job, and the interview (during the pandemic) and then recent move to Cornell. He reflects upon his experience of his book being the subject of the 2019 ISA-Northeast circle, discusses his approach to writing ('chaos'), and what he does to recharge and unwind. Dr. Ba and Brent conclude with a discussion on the World Cup.

Professor Rita Abrahamsen joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Rita grew up on a small island off the coast of Southern Norway. She was a good student, very interested in the world with parents who had been the Merchant Marines, and a father who had served during World War II. She talks about the subjects she enjoyed in school, the decision to go to university and pursue journalism, and her career in journalism, especially radio, working  including serving as an anchor for the Norwegian Broadcasting Company. Her purpose in graduate school was to get more training to become a foreign correspondent, but at Swansea she pursued a PhD with training in both African politics and International Relations. She tried out the market, and after a few interviews,  landed a Lecturer position at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. She reflects upon those years at Aber and its dynamic intellectual environment, the British academy, and her rapidly expanding research profile throughout that time. She concludes by talking about her move to Canada and helping build out the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at Ottawa, her approach to writing, what she does to recharge (and how she's hoping to get back to running), and more!  

After months, and perhaps years, of cajoling and haranguing the Hayseed Scholar, friend of the pod (ep14) Matt McDonald finally convinced Brent to turn the tables and become a guest on the  podcast. Matt interviewed Brent at the end of the International Studies Association conference in Montreal, in Matt's hotel room. This was after Matt had enlisted throughout the week a host of conspirators who helped him lobby Brent to be interviewed. Over a few beers and with much good cheer, they chat about Brent's growing up in Iowa, attending Chicago Bears games as a kid, having two teachers as parents, and how golf shaped his college decision-making. They discuss Brent's journey through graduate school, the PhD, and his positions at the University of Kansas and now the University of Utah. Often pounding the table like some 1930s-era dictator, Brent discussed what the tenure process was like for him at KU, the difficult but also life-changing move to Utah, walking with Chase pups for all kinds of reasons, how he approaches writing and how he unwinds and recharges by going back to Iowa and seeing his family. Matt and Brent first connected in 2010 when Brent reached out to Matt about his IPS article, and that prompted a discussion here about how and why Brent has sent those complimentary emails to scholars. A number of F-bombs were dropped, razzing of Jelena Subotic, Tony Lang, and Chris Agius ensued and friend of the pod and special guest Cian O'Driscoll made an appearance towards the end of the conversation.  It’s a whirlwind discussion and one Brent remains self-conscious about, but also a rewarding experience for him in chatting with, and about, longtime friends in this vocation. 

Professor Debbie Lisle of Queens University, Belfast, grew up in North Vancouver, in an environment of 'liberal feminism' which gave her a sense of possibility in life, but it was an interesting journey thereafter. Debbie chats with Brent about her decision to go to McGill for college, playing soccer throughout her undergrad and Master's years, and an in-between period of working at a lumber store and then traveling the world including to Southeast Asia and South Africa. Those months of traveling in her early 20s shaped for Debbie the major threads of research she would pursue throughout her academic career. This started at Victoria, where 'chance played a role' when she took a seminar with Rob Walker that would get her thinking of academia as a career. She went to Keele in the UK for PhD, working initially with David Campbell and then, when he left for Newcastle, finishing with Andrew Linklater. She talks about how critical IR, especially in the UK, had a different dynamic back in the late 90s and early 2000s,  before it 'exploded' onto the scene and branched into different streams of research. Debbie reflects on getting a job at Queens, being a working parent, how she handled the criticism of a harsh review of her first book, incorporating it for her second book, and her approach to writing. She closes the conversation discussing her recent health challenge and how she has worked through it in the past year. 

Professor Ann Towns of the University of Gothenburg visits the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Professor Towns grew up in Sweden, and was interested in playing music and especially performing classical music as a child. But by the time she was in high school, she wanted to broaden her horizons, and get out of not only her town but Sweden. That led her to Kansas, where she finished high school in an exchange program. She lived outside of a small town, and she reflects on the different contexts in the rural US compared to Sweden - religion, expectations on teenagers, and the social environment of that time and place. She went to Nebraska for undergraduate, and she talks about the classes she took, the music scene in Lincoln, and what she wanted to do after college. Professor Towns traveled to Peru after college, and ended up working for an NGO that helped those who suffered from political violence. She talks about going to the Univ of Minnesota for graduate school, some post-docs she took after her PhD, going on the market and working at the University of Delaware, her experience at the ISA-Northeast Circle in 2009, and then eventually going back to Sweden where she is now. She concludes with how she approaches writing, what she does to decompress, and more! 

Professor Helen Kinsella joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Professor Kinsella grew up in Ithaca, New York, and she reflects on what that was like, plus a reluctance or indifference to going to college. She eventually chose Bryn Mawr and she talks about what an  amazing environment she experienced there. Professor Kinsella also spent some time at Reed college, then after college she went to Seattle and worked with victims of domestic abuse, and working with children in a variety of contexts there, being in Seattle in the early 1990s around the vibrant cultural community there. She discusses going to the Humphrey school for her Masters, working with the UN, heading on for her PhD thereafter, and then getting a tenure track  job at Wisconsin alongside discussing her first few publications.  Prof Kinsella discusses her approach to writing,  the challenges of keeping up with ‘debates’ in IR, doing yoga and F45, and more!Read more about Prof Kinsella's work at her website: https://www.helenmkinsella.com 

Professor Alexander Barder joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Dr. Barder was born in Paris, France, but he and his family moved to Miami very shortly thereafter. He traveled back to France often to visit family, and mainly spoke French until going to a bilingual school. His discussions with his grandpa about World War II sparked an interest in history, which, along with math, were his favorite subjects in school. Alex went to boarding school in Geneva his senior year of high school, worked at a bank and thought about finance or banking as a major. But after three semesters at American University in DC, he quite college, went back to Miami and worked various jobs (including brokering) for the next seven years. Alex chipped away at his undergraduate degree, finishing in Spring 2003 with a BS in Mathematics. He became interested in International Relations, and took an IR theory seminar, co-taught by Harry Gould and Nick Onuf, at FIU in the Spring of 2004 that got him interested in being an academic. After being wait listed that year for the PhD program at Johns Hopkins, Alex got in the following year and pursued his PhD studies there. He talks about writing and publishing with Francois Debrix, including his first book published by Routledge in the Interventions series in 2012. Alex got a job at American University of Beirut in 2013, where he and his family stayed until 2014, seeing first hand the impact of the nearby civil war in Syria. Alex returned to FIU as an Assistant Professor that year, where he has been ever since. They finish by chatting about how he approaches writing, his practices of decompressing and health, spending time with his family, and more! 

Professor Patricia Owens joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast.Professor Owens grew up in London, with Irish parents who'd emigrated from Ireland during the Troubles, and the conflict in Northern Ireland provided a background to her life and especially growing up. Patricia went to a Catholic school in South London until 16, and her Catholicism was less a 'religious' factor than it was a cultural and political identity that shaped her time growing up in England in those days. She talks about playing football from an early age, going to Bristol for uni, the very impactful time studying abroad in the mid-90s in Chapel Hill, NC, where she first encountered political theory, and was a tour manager for the local indie rock band June in 1996:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_(North_Carolina_band)Professor Owens went to Cambridge for her Masters, then to Aberystwyth for her PhD. She reflects on that time and the fellowships and postdocs that happened in the late 1990s and early 2000s in the US academy, and how those shaped what she was interested in. But there was always Arendt, a theorist whose work influenced Prof Owens' throughout the 2000s (work that Brent connected with especially during his time at KU), and 2010s. Professor Owens talks about the Women in the History of International Thought project, a Leverhulme-funded project that has reconfigured our understanding of the history and historiography of International Thought (and IR):https://whit.web.ox.ac.uk/home She and Brent conclude with her thoughts on writing, decompressing, and more! 

Professor Carla Martinez Machain joins the Hayseed Scholar Podcast. Professor Machain talks about growing up in Mexico, specifically outside of and then also in Mexico City, the schools she went to, her interests, doing Model UN and visiting The Hague during an overseas trip when Milosevic was on trial, and then deciding to go to Rice University in Houston for undergrad. She talks about that transition, the decision to go to grad school at Rice instead of the other places she could have gone, how her graduate training included taking 3 years of classes, comps and then her dissertation. She reflects on presenting at conferences (which she says she didn’t enjoy back then but does now), and getting a tenure track position at Kansas State. She talks about getting settled in at K State and she and Brent discuss how her high productivity led her to go up early for tenure. Carla discusses how and why she eventually began to enjoy going to conferences, how she balances work and not working, how she approaches writing and her analysis and her ways of decompressing through running and cooking. The discussion concludes on the topic of her upcoming move to SUNY-Buffalo where she’ll be taking a position this fall, after a decade in Manhattan.