Podcast · Tech & Science

The Hayseed Scholar Podcast

by Brent Steele · English · Tech & Science

Interviews with political science, history, sociology and international relations scholars about their journeys, work, practices, and challenges.

New episodes: Now and then
Typical length: 1 hr 37 min
Latest: 21 Dec 2025
Language: English

Latest episode

21 Dec 2025 · 32 min

Farewell

The Hayseed Scholar podcast has come to a close. In this farewell episode, Brent's brother Kyle hosts it and they chat about the podcast and why Brent is closing it down. Two friends of the pod, Matt McDonald and Jelena Subotic, also join to mention what they liked and what they (Jelena) did not like about the podcast. Brent closes by asking Kyle, who is a LinkedIn rockstar, about the changing landscape of social media and reaching beyond an academic audience, before the two of them sign-off ...

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

S1 · E42 · 5 Sep 2025 · 1 hr 18 min
Benjamin de Carvalho
Dr. Benjamin de Carvalho joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Ben was born in Switzerland to a mother from Norway and a father from Brazil. Ben talks about how that transpired, growing up in Norway, and how a Fulbright brought him to the United States in the late 90's. Ben recounts his time at the New School for his first Master's, moving to Cambridge for his M.Phil and PhD, and ending back in Norway at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, or NUPI, where he remains gainfully ...
S1 · E41 · 17 Dec 2024 · 1 hr 30 min
Jason Ralph
Professor Jason Ralph joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Brent has known Jason's work for two decades, but only fairly recently met him in person. Jason grew up in the village of Norton Canes in South Staffordshire near the West Midlands of England. His father had worked in the coal mines years prior, but then started a business where all of Jason's family would eventually work. The original plan was to get a teaching degree focused in physical education, but that didn't quite work out....
S1 · E40 · 12 Aug 2024 · 1 hr 45 min
Jamie Frueh
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, and 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 jour...
S1 · E39 · 12 Apr 2024 · 1 hr 37 min
Sebastian Kaempf
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 ...
S1 · E38 · 19 Mar 2024 · 1 hr 17 min
Lene Hansen
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 tal...
S1 · E37 · 22 Feb 2024 · 2 hr 2 min
Huss Banai
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...
S1 · E36 · 7 Feb 2024 · 1 hr 47 min
Erica Resende
Dr. Erica Simone Almeida Resende of the Brazilian War College joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Erica grew up in Brazil but, as she phrases it, 'in between worlds'. There was her Brazilian home, and there was her German school, which she explains has situated her as a sort of 'bridge' moving between the Global North and Global South. Erica went to law school and worked for a law firm in the 1990s, but changed gears and pursued graduate degrees in Political Science and International Relations...
S1 · E35 · 27 Sep 2023 · 1 hr 35 min
Jarrod Hayes
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 thing...
S1 · E34 · 2 Jun 2023 · 1 hr 32 min
Oumar Ba
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 t...
S1 · E33 · 5 May 2023 · 1 hr 36 min
Rita Abrahamsen
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 Br...
S1 · E32 · 9 Apr 2023 · 1 hr 47 min
Brent J Steele
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 ch...
S1 · E31 · 20 Feb 2023 · 2 hr 10 min
Debbie Lisle
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 trave...
S1 · E30 · 4 Jan 2023 · 1 hr 57 min
Ann Towns
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...
S1 · E29 · 12 Oct 2022 · 1 hr 47 min
Helen Kinsella
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 conte...
S1 · E28 · 19 Aug 2022 · 1 hr 30 min
Alexander Barder
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...
S1 · E27 · 29 Jul 2022 · 1 hr 50 min
Patricia Owens
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 pla...
S1 · E26 · 3 Jun 2022 · 1 hr 8 min
Carla Martinez Machain
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,...
S1 · E25 · 17 May 2022 · 1 hr 16 min
Duncan Bell
Professor Duncan Bell joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Duncan grew up in the Midlands in a rural area of England. He was interested in international politics from a fairly young age. Duncan chose to pursue a degree in war studies at King's College London, and considered joining the military thereafter. But the transition to London from a quieter area, and the experiences he had there, changed his plans. He tells Brent about getting his Master's and then PhD at Cambridge, and a momentous yea...
S1 · E24 · 20 Jan 2022 · 1 hr 41 min
Xymena Kurowska
Xymena Kurowska of Central European University joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Professor Kurowska grew up in the northern part of Poland, at a time of world and local transition. She discusses what it was like to move around to 'closed' cities in a military family, having a father who served in the Polish military and also in a UN peacekeeping operation in Southern Lebanon. Xymena recalls how a karate injury almost kept her out of going to a university, and how she came to study Internatio...
S1 · E23 · 7 Dec 2021 · 1 hr 26 min
Tarak Barkawi
Professor Tarak Barkawi joins Brent this week. He discusses growing up in Orange County in the 1970s and 1980s, in a very politically aware family, and his varied interests in military history but also LA’s punk rock scene, having a school that doubled as a fallout shelter and his first encounters with eye-opening racial violence. He talks about his decision to go to George Washington University, getting his master’s at the LSE, his brief overlap with John Vincent before the latter died, the ...
S1 · E22 · 5 Oct 2021 · 1 hr 38 min
Sophie Harman
Professor Harman joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. She starts off discussing with Brent her childhood and growing up on a farm in Buckinghamshire in SE England, her interests and aspirations during that time and the family dynamics regarding politics and who was expected to take over the farm each generation. She had a gap year, then went to Manchester for undergrad and graduate training, got into global public health, political economy, and traveled to Tanzania, and then as she tells it was...
S1 · E21 · 18 Sep 2021 · 1 hr 25 min
Rebecca Adler-Nissen
Professor Rebecca Adler-Nissen joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Professor Adler-Nissen is a proflic scholar known for her work on diplomacy, integration, practice theory, and her deep knowledge and use of social theory. She talks to Brent about growing up in Denmark, but also Israel and the United States. Before going to uni, Rebecca spent some time working on boats, sailing at one point to the Canary Islands where she looked for more work at the age of 18. She eventually returned to Europe...
S1 · E20 · 8 Jul 2021 · 1 hr 48 min
Toni Haastrup
Dr. Toni Haastrup of the University of Stirling joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Dr. Haastrup was born in Aberdeen, but moved to Nigeria when she was very young. She talks about primary and then secondary school there, the decisions she had to make early on about language training in the schools, and then her family’s move to California during the last part of high school. She discusses going to Las Positas in California, and then UC Davis, where she pursued a degree in IR, with a min...
S1 · E19 · 25 Jun 2021 · 1 hr 44 min
Francois Debrix
Professor Francois Debrix of Virginia Tech University joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Francois grew up in France, attending college there with degrees in Spanish and English, and then International Law, Political Science and Diplomatic History. An exchange program through the University of Strasbourg brought Francois to the US and Purdue, where he pursued his Master's, and then PhD under the supervision of Cynthia Weber. Professor Debrix talks about his interest in ideology that led to his...
S1 · E18 · 8 Jun 2021 · 1 hr 17 min
Tim Longman
Professor Timothy Longman of Boston University joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Tim chats with Brent about growing up in Illinois and Kansas, with two politically active parents and a father who was a pastor. Professor Longman attended Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma, pursuing his interests of religion and politics. While there, he also became politically active, working on the Mondale campaign in 1984. He speaks about his graduate training at the University of Wisconsin-Madison...
S1 · E17 · 31 May 2021 · 1 hr 30 min
Tony Lang
Professor Anthony F. Lang, Jr. visits the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Tony grew up in Cleveland in a big Catholic family, and he went to Catholic schools all the way through college at Notre Dame, where he took a class with Alasdair MacIntyre. Tony shares how he became interested in philosophy, and then political science, pursuing his PhD at Johns Hopkins where he took classes from William Connolly, David Campbell, and developed his dissertation under the guidance of Stephen David. He discusses ...
S1 · E16 · 7 Mar 2021 · 1 hr 37 min
Laura Shepherd
Professor Laura Shepherd from the University of Sydney joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Professor Shepherd is an iconic and authoritative voice in International Relations, and especially with her multiple-award winning works on Gender, Peacebuilding, Methods, and and Feminism. And yet, she didn't start out planning for a career in academia. Growing up in London, then moving to just outside of Cambridge, Laura wasn't quite sure what she wanted to do. For a time, her work in the hospitality s...
S1 · E15 · 18 Jan 2021 · 1 hr 51 min
Aida Hozic
Professor Aida Hozic joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Aida chats with Brent about growing up in Sarajevo, the 1984 Olympics, pursuing theater and then having a change of career plans that led her to pursuing a Master's in Bologna, Italy, at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and then a PhD at the University of Virginia. All of this as war and violence engulfed Sarajevo, how her mother moved to the US to stay with her during her PhD studies and beyond, and what it wa...
S1 · E14 · 6 Dec 2020 · 1 hr 51 min
Matt McDonald
Professor Matt McDonald of the University of Queensland joins the Hayseed Scholar podcast. Brent has known of Matt's work for almost two decades, and known him directly for about half that time, emailing Matt about the latter's fantastic 2010 'Lest we Forget' IPS article and striking up a correspondence, then friendship, since that time. Matt talks about growing up in a small town in New South Wales and how his dad having a bike accident as a child led Matt and his siblings on a path to coll...

About The Hayseed Scholar Podcast

Interviews with political science, history, sociology and international relations scholars about their journeys, work, practices, and challenges.

The Hayseed Scholar Podcast is a English tech & science podcast from Brent Steele. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Brent Steele
Language: English
Category: Tech & Science
New episodes: Now and then
Typical length: 1 hr 37 min
Latest episode: 21 Dec 2025
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1476197146

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