EJIL: The Podcast! Expands

After 6 trial podcasts initiated by Dapo Akande, Marko Milanovic and Philippa Webb, in which they, their guests and an EJIL editor in chief, discussed issues ranging from immunities to international organisations, from cyber attacks to the US elections, the EJIL boards reviewed the experiment. A decision was taken: continue, and expand.

We expand in terms of team members, topics and frequency. Board members Megan Donaldson and Surabhi Ranganathan have joined the team of podcast hosts. They begin with a new series titled Reckonings with Europe: Pasts and Present. Delivering on the expansion in themes, they open conversations about enduring legacies of empire, capitalism, and racism in international law and the legal academy. Ranging across contexts and scales within and beyond Europe, from international order to quotidian experience, episodes will be released quarterly. 

EJIL: Live!, the interview by the EJIL Editors in Chief with authors who appear in the most recent issue of EJIL, also continues as part of the podcast series. The first EJIL: Live! as part of the podcast series, with Laurence Helfer and Erik Voeten, has already been released.

The expansion in hosts and topics allows for a higher frequency. With three teams producing quarterly episodes, EJIL: The Podcast! should be available to accompany you on your runs, while washing up the dishes, or as your replacement lectures, on a monthly basis.

Now, fasten your seatbelts (or better: harness your statues) for the first episode in the Reckonings with Europe series. This is what Megan and Surabhi promise us:

EJIL:The Podcast! Episode 8 – After the Fall

We begin with statues. The toppling of the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston into Bristol Harbour was a cheerful spectacle within a bleak year. A moment of local politics and popular protest, it was also part of a global pattern of confrontation with and around monuments. Such moments have divided observers and concentrated questions. What does the toppling of statues signify? Where does this process of reckoning ‘end’? For some, these questions are a demand to stop the contestation at some (elusive) point. Our conversation asks instead where the reckoning might go. What are the paths to dismantlement of the structures of exploitation, and imperial glorification which statues like Colston’s (a 19th century commemoration of a 17th century life) signify? 

We are joined by Professor Matthew Smith (director of UCL’s Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery), Dr Mezna Qato (Newnham College, Cambridge; curator of a project on Archives of the Disappeared), and Dr Rahul Rao (SOAS, currently writing a book on the politics of controversial statues), who speak to us about statues, about less tangible legacies woven into institutions, and about the place of law in struggles about pasts and futures.

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