RevDem Podcast

Marius Turda in conversation with Ferenc Laczo about "A Cultural History of Race", a series of six books tracing  history on the long term, from antiquity all the way till contemporary times.

Richard Youngs in conversation with Michał Matlak about citizens’ attitudes towards democracy, transformative power of protests movements, citizens’ assemblies as well as democratic innovations on the European level.

Laszlo Bruszt, our editor-in-chief, in conversation with Michał Matlak about the ideas behind the Review of Democracy, the foundation of the Democracy Institute in Budapest and his academic interests: the relations between core and periphery in the governance of the European Union.

Professor Dimitry Kochenov* in conversation with Michał Matlak explains why he believes citizenship is a “perpetuation of the ideas of aristocracy,” sexism, and racism; what can be done to fix this issue; and what motivated him to write “Citizenship” (MIT Press, 2019).

RevDem Editor Oliver Garner sits down with Barbara Grabowska-Moroz, Research Fellow at the CEU Democracy Institute Rule of Law Workgroup, and member of the Horizon 2020 RECONNECT Project. They discuss the current state of the rule of law crisis in Poland, the arduous relationship between the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Polish Constitutional Tribunal, and the effects this has on other EU Member States and constitutional courts.

In conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Emily Greble discusses what foregrounding Muslims’ agency implies for the writing of European history; what were key legacies of the Ottoman Empire and how Muslims became a distinct legal minority; in what ways they related to the major political movements of the twentieth century; and how focusing on their experiences can help us reconceptualize questions of secularism and citizenship.

Bence Bari interviews Tamás Dombos, from the Hungarian LGBTQI organization ‘Háttér Society’ concerning the recently adopted Hungarian anti-LGBT measures, their transnational and historical background with respect to the global dynamics of acceptance, and homophobia between the Western and Eastern hemisphere.

In this interview, RevDem editor Michal Matlak interviewed Professor Julie Smith*, Baroness of Newnham, who is a Liberal Democrat parliamentarian in the British House of Lords. They discuss referendums, the causes and outcomes of Brexit, how the negotiation strategies of both the EU and UK could have been improved, the likelihood of the UK returning to the EU in the future, and how the COVID-19 pandemic has complicated post-Brexit evaluations.

In conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Emily Levine (Stanford University) discusses key ideas in her new book Allies and Rivals: German-American Exchange and the Rise of the Modern Research University. Allies and Rivals is a transatlantic monograph that draws on extensive historical research and applies sociological theory to study how the academic social contract was repeatedly renegotiated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The conversation addresses the rise of modern research universities and its alternatives, questions of meritocracy and democracy, academic freedom and hard compromises, the global exchange of ideas and academic innovation in the twenty-first century.

In this wide-ranging conversation occasioned by the release of his The Dream of Europe. Travels in the Twenty-First Century, Geert Mak discusses with Ferenc Laczo why he chose to write a sequel to In Europe. Travels Through the Twentieth Century; how interconnections have led to new tensions; how the European and the democrat in him have quarreled; how he traces undercurrents in society; and how important it is to understand the sources of despair.