Bariscope

Hello everyone! In this second last episode of Bariscope we sit down and talk all things creating your own podcast: how the idea crystallised, the questions you need to ask yourself before you embark on the journey of podcasting, why preparation is key, the equipment we used, how to find and reach out to potential guests and of course we share our learnings from these two years of podcasting. This episode is for all of you that are curious about starting their own podcast and all others that are intrigued about a behind-the-scenes-ramble from yours truly ;)

Voilà, that’s all. If you have any questions about starting your own podcast, don’t hesitate to reach out on Instagram @bariscope_ccc!

Stay critically curious,

Lea & Lukas

The equipments mentioned:

**timestamps below** For the final episode of this three-part series we have the great pleasure to welcome Anna-Lina Müller, Co-Director of foraus (the leading grass root think tank on Swiss foreign policy) since Spring 2022. After starting medicine at the University of Zurich and realising that it simply wasn’t for her, she switched to political science and history. During her bachelor studies Anna-Lina co-founded DiscussIt, an association that organizes political podiums in over 40 partner schools in Switzerland ahead of votations. In 2021 she completed her masters degree in political science and government at the University of Oxford having focused in her thesis on the political consequences of gender-specific job automation. Prior to being appointed Co-Director of foraus, Anna-Lina worked at the Swiss Federal Departement for Foreign Affairs, the UN in Nairobi, various NGOs in Athens and South Africa and think tanks in Zurich, Brussels, Oxford and Berlin. Anna-Lina has covered in her work asylum policy, the conflict in the Middle East, security related questions such as piracy in East Africa, democratic change, welfare politics, EU-Swiss relationships and currently Swiss neutrality. We took full advantage of Anna-Lina’s incredibly broad experience and asked her what it takes to build your own organisation, if moving abroad can be lonely, how Switzerland can have a more courageous foreign policy in a polarised world and how think tanks can contribute to bringing ideas from academia to policymakers and citizens. We promise you'll learn so much from Anna-Lina for example that even at Oxford University « they’re only cooking with water ».

Enjoy and stay critically curious,

Lea & Lukas

We are looking forward to sharing with you this conversation with Raquel Herzog (it's been a long time coming!). Raquel is the founder of SAO association, a Swiss NGO that supports displaced women in Greece since 2015. We actually had the pleasure to welcome Raquel Herzog at the University of Geneva during an event both of us co-organized with foraus (an organization working on swiss foreign policy) back in September 2020. We've received many positive feedbacks on that event and the situation of female refugees continues to be underreported, which is why it made absolute sense to invite her again, this time on the podcast. In our 45 Minute conversation, Raquel will shed light on asylum policy in Europe and the situation of in particular female refugees in Greece, who constitute over 50% of the people on many Greek islands. We will also be talking about the ongoing humanitarian situation regarding the displacement of millions of Ukrainians because of the war. 

*timestamps below*

Bariscope is back with three great episodes! It’s an honour and pleasure to have a very special guest to kick off this third season: Belkis Wille, Senior researcher in the crisis and conflict division at Human Rights Watch. She has been reporting in Ukraine on the killings, torture and enforced disappearances in areas around Kyiv and Chernihiv as well as the siege of Mariupol in March 2022. 

We will talk about the horrible first months of the war in Ukraine, how human rights watch operates in such a context and then hear Belkis' take on how this war compares to the crisis in Yemen and how international humanitarian law can have an impact. 

A little more on Belkis: she grew up in Switzerland, moved to the US to complete a bachelor degree in government at Harvard university followed by a master in human rights and humanitarian law at the University of Essex in 2011. After her studies Belkis worked in Geneva at the World Organization against Torture as a human rights officer for the Middle East and for North Africa and then shortly after, joined Human Rights Watch – at age 24. Before starting her current role, she worked as Human Rights Watch’s senior Iraq researcher and published extensively on ISIS and before that was the Kuwait, Qatar and Yemen researcher, based in Sanaa. We hope you learn as much as we did!

Stay critically curious,

Lea & Lukas

This conversation was recorded mid-May 2022, we encourage you to check out the website from human rights watch for more recent information as well as Belkis’ Twitter account (she has over 18’000 followers!).

Economics is a crucial component of International Relations. Concepts such as trade, growth and GDP are popular and largely applied without discussions regarding potential shortcomings and how they emerged. In fact, universities almost exclusively teach what is called "neoclassical" economics, a mathematics and market-based theory of economics. This rigid and uniform approach to how economics thaught, defined and looked at is disputed, predominantly by students that want to make room for discussions and publications on alternative takes on economics by redefining the discipline and the concepts it teaches. These new approaches are what is called Plural Economics. 

To discuss Plural Economics and its impact on International Relations we invited Oliver Braunschweig to Bariscope, one of the most prominent representatives of "Rethinking Economics Switzerland", a national student network aimed at promoting plural economics. 

In the first episode, Oliver presents the fundamentals of Plural Economics by describing different theories, their historic evolution and new inputs. We then discuss why they have not been integrated into curriculas and how academia could make room for new approaches to finish the first episode with Oliver with his take on a potential disconnect between scholars and the wider public. 

In the second episode with Oliver we will make a bridge between the more theoretical questions of the first episode and International Relations by applying the theoretical findings to challenges in IR such as growth, trade, the environment and social justice. 

We are thrilled to present to you this new subject on Bariscope and hope that it serves for good food of thought!

And do send us any feedback you have on Instagram @bariscope_ccc! We will also be sharing Oliver Braunschweig's top book recommendations over there ;)

Have a great week and stay critically curious,

Lea & Lukas

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More resources and all the books mentioned by Oliver in the Episode:

On plural Economics in general:

Today we are welcoming the brilliant Coline Rapneau on Bariscope - our first guest from outside academia with extensive experience as a humanitarian worker at the International Committee of the Red Cross. Before joining the ICRC Coline Rapneau completed her Master's Degree in international relations with a major in International Law at the Graduate institute here in Geneva, then worked as a humanitarian officer at the French permanent mission to the UN and spent three years as a legal assistant for the international criminal tribunal for Rwanda and ex-Yugoslavia. At the ICRC she spent 6 years as a protection delegate for victims of sexual violence in different countries, followed by several years as a sexual violence advisor and then as crowdfunding project manager at the Red Cross. After 13 years at the ICRC she is now manager at CHS Alliance (CHS standing for Core Humanitarian Standards) and is specialized in the protection from sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment. Coline Rapneau is also a certified professional and personal development coach, and she is here to give us very valuable tips on how to identify what future career path we should embark on and remind us of the importance of listening - to others and to ourselves, without judgement.

*(Timestamps below)*

We are welcoming Dr. Elena Cima on Bariscope to finally discuss a climate-related subject on our podcast. Having studied International Law at Yale Law school and Tsinghua University before completing her Ph.D. at the Graduate institute in Geneva and joining the University of Geneva as a research and teaching fellow, Dr. Cima presents an impressive academic record focusing principally on international energy governance as well as on the role international trade, investment and dispute settlement can play in addressing climate change. Tune in to find out how actors and institutions that are not overly associated with green policies such as the WTO increasingly incorporate sustainability and environmental considerations into their actions and how the balance of power between corporations, governments and the civil society is changing.

Dr. Cima first explains the legal framework of international energy governance and illustrates how international environmental law boasts a challenging complexity and fragmentation. Next, we discuss how the introduction of sustainable development, on paper, allowed for the conciliation of the diverging interests of corporations, host countries in the global south and the environment and where this concept presents  shortcomings. We further examine how state autonomy can be preserved vis-à-vis foreign investors and how environmental considerations are increasingly incorporated in international agreements between actors and institutions that were not founded based on environmental imperatives.

On a more abstract level, Dr. Cima explains how law can be embraced as a tool to foster progressive and sustainable policies, for example in leading to governments being sued before national courts. We further discuss the concept of environmental democracy and overall changes in power relations between corporations, governments and the civil society. 

Lastly, Dr. Cima shares her experience at Yale Law School and illustrates how both academic life and the general approach to academia of this institution differ from continental European universities.

Season two of 'Bariscope - critically curious conversations' is starting off with a stellar guest : Professor Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, international history scholar and Chair of the 'International History and Politics Department' at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies here in Geneva. An expert in transnational terrorism and democratization in Africa and the Middle East, Prof. Mohamedou has spent many years in the US at Harvard University, the City University of New York, at the International Council on Human Rights Policy, prior to becoming Deputy Director and Academic Dean of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. Between these academic appointments he served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of Mauritania from 2008 to 2009 and is since 2017 a member of the High Level Panel on Migration set up by the UN and the African Union.

We couldn't hope for a more qualified guest to walk us through two major events in the 21st century: 9/11 and the Arab Spring, both events Prof. Mohamedou has published extensively on. Furthermore, we’ll be discussing why it’s important to understand terrorism in a historical context and not reduce it to radical Islamism, why we are seeing the election of authoritarian quote on quote strong men in Brasil, Hungary, the Philippines and so many other countries, the rising securitization and surveillance in the aftermath of 9/11 and why we as young people need to be courageous and call out injustices even if we are not directly effected by them.

It is an honour and pleasure to welcome for today’s episode professor Simone Dietrich! Since 2017 she is an associate professor at the faculty of sciences de la société at the University of Geneva, specialised in foreign aid and international development. We will be talking to her about how domestic politics and civil society shape foreign aid allocation, the differences between the different development actors (NGOs, International Organisations, Public Private Partnerships), what effect a left-leaning government compared to a right-leaning government has on development spendings, what interests states pursue when allocating foreign aid and the geostrategic tensions in international development between the USA and China. In particular, we will hear about the motivations of Prof. Simone Dietrich to re-enter academia after having worked for several years in the field for various international organizations, NGOs, for the German foreign office as well as on election observation missions to Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Bosnia and Herzegovina. We hope you enjoy this conversation, learn plenty and are inspired to curiously question current foreign aid practices.

*en français* On se réjouit beaucoup de vous présenter notre troisième invitée : Pamela Ohene-Nyako, assistante-doctorante dans l’Unité d’histoire contemporaine à l’Université de Genève, alumna du BARI, qui enseigne entre autres le séminaire "Multilatéralisme et organisations internationales". Aujourd’hui, on va parler du féminisme intersectionnel, du racisme comme force structurante dans les relations internationales, de mouvements transnationaux féministes et anti-racistes entre autre Black Lives Matter, mais aussi de questions d’identité, en quoi l’art, la littérature et la musique peuvent nourrir le travail académique et enfin notre invité va partager une expérience très personnelle celui d’un burnout qu’elle a traversé quand elle avait 21 ans. Notre invitée est un vrai role model : à côté de sa thèse de doctorat qui porte sur l’activisme transnational des femmes noires-européennes depuis les années 1970s jusqu’à l’aube des années 2000s, elle est fondatrice de la plateforme Afrolitt, une plateforme qui veut favoriser la réflexion critique à partir d'œuvres littéraires émanant d'Afrique subsaharienne et de sa diaspora.