Voices: The EISA Podcast

This month, we are flipping the script a little: Our new episode features our producer Judith Koch (University of Sussex), whose recent PhD research offers a fresh perspective on Brexit: rather than a sudden rupture, she interprets it as the latest chapter in a decades-long tension between the UK and Europe. What if Brexit wasn’t a bolt from the blue, but just the latest instance in a decades-long struggle between the UK and its European counterparts? In conversation with host Polly Pallister-Wilkins, Judith talks us through the longer history of Brexit, all the way back to the Suez Crisis of...

What do recent controversies over statues reveal about global politics and the legacy of empire? In this episode, Rahul Rao (University of St. Andrews) joins us to discuss his new book “The Psychic Lives of Statues: Reckoning with the Rubble of Empire” (Pluto Press, 2025). In conversation with host Polly Pallister-Wilkins, Rahul Rao talks us through his work in which he explores how debates over statues – from Cape Town to Bristol and Richmond – uncover deeper struggles over race, caste, and decolonisation, and how these disputes have reshaped anticolonial political thought. Journeying through sites of contestation across South Africa,...

In this episode, we are joined by Noam Leshem (Durham University) to discuss his new book Edges of Care: Living and Dying in No Man’s Land. Noam Leshem explores the spatial politics of abandonment, highlighting how marginalised communities – like the Israeli Black Panthers fought against systemic discrimination faced by Mizrahi Jews in the 1970s united with marginalised Palestinians - found moments of solidarity in shared struggles against state neglect. Noam Leshem is associate professor of Political Geography at Durham University where he works closely with communities grappling with the impacts of violent conflict, emphasising creative methods and innovative collaborations....

What does a just energy transition look like, and how do politics and power shape the global transition to low-carbon energy? In this episode, we speak with Peter Newell (University of Sussex), a leading expert on the political economy of environment and development, whose career spans more than three decades of research at different universities, including the Universities of Sussex, Oxford, Warwick and East Anglia, and FLACSO Argentina, policy advising, and activism. From climate change governance to corporate accountability and trade policy, he has worked across multiple continents, including Argentina, China, India, and South Africa, to analyse how political and...