In today’s episode of Being Human we’ll be looking at the topic of disaster - how do people prepare for disasters, how can we mitigate their effects, and how do we use technologies to equip ourselves in times of trouble? We’ll be looking specifically at Japan, a country which has frequent natural disasters, and which on March 11th 2011 suffered the triple disaster of a tsunami, earthquake, and nuclear meltdown, killing nearly 20,000 people and causing long-term devastation for those affected.
Today's episode is hosted by Laura Haapio-Kirk, and she is joined by:
To subscribe to the Being Human Show, search for ‘Being Human’ in your preferred podcast player, or find us over on our RSS feed. This podcast is produced by Jennifer Cearns and Laura Haapio-Kirk, and edited by Antónia Gama and Deanna Mitchell, in partnership with the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. All rights reserved.
In this week’s episode, host Dr Jennifer Cearns is joined by Dr Erol Saglam (Stockholm University), Dr Silvia Posocco (Birkbeck, University of London), and Daniel Artus (University College London) to talk about what conspiracy theories are and how they operate in different cultural contexts across the world, as well as how anthropologists might approach them.
To subscribe to the Being Human Show, search for ‘Being Human’ in your preferred podcast player, or find us over on our RSS feed. This podcast is produced by Jennifer Cearns and Laura Haapio-Kirk, and edited by Antónia Gama and Deanna Mitchell, in partnership with the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. All rights reserved.
In this week’s episode, host Dr Jennifer Cearns is joined by Professor Emma Crewe (SOAS), Bryony Rudkin (University of Birmingham), and Dr Igor Cherstich (University College London) to discuss what democracy is, and how it is constructed and experienced within different cultural contexts across the world. What can anthropology add to our understanding of these political forms and practices, and how might an anthropological approach depart from the more political, economic or even philosophical conversations we might hear more typically through digital and print media?
To subscribe to the Being Human Show, search for ‘Being Human’ in your preferred podcast player, or find us over on our RSS feed. This podcast is produced by Jennifer Cearns and Laura Haapio-Kirk, and edited by Antónia Gama and Deanna Mitchell, in partnership with the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. All rights reserved.
In this week’s episode, host Laura Haapio-Kirk is joined by Dr Matthew Lariviere (University of Sheffield), Dr Jason Danely (Oxford Brookes University), and Dr Iza Kavedžija (University of Exeter) to discuss ageing - from the opportunities that come with later life, to the often negative imagination of ageing in popular discourse. What does it mean to age well, and how is this culturally constructed in different parts of the world?
To subscribe to the Being Human Show, search for ‘Being Human’ in your preferred podcast player, or find us over on our RSS feed. This podcast is produced by Dr Jennifer Cearns and Laura Haapio-Kirk, and edited by Dr Antónia Gama and Deanna Mitchell, in partnership with the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. All rights reserved.
In this week’s episode, host Jennifer Cearns is joined by Professor David Zeitlyn (University of Oxford), Dr William Matthews (London School of Economics), Wesam Hassan (University of Oxford) and Dr Anthony Pickles (University of East Anglia) to discuss their research looking at the strategies people employ to deal with and understand uncertainty and luck in various contexts around the world. What does it mean to 'be lucky', and what can we do to influence the luck (or misfortune) of those around us? Is uncertainty actually a good, or even a productive thing?
To subscribe to the Being Human Show, search for ‘Being Human’ in your preferred podcast player, or find us over on our RSS feed . This podcast is produced by Dr Jennifer Cearns and Laura Haapio-Kirk, and edited by Dr Antónia Gama, in partnership with the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. All rights reserved.
In today’s episode of Being Human we discuss how anthropologists are turning to illustration to tell the stories from their research. We will be talking about how drawings and comics can help to reveal the human lives at the centre of anthropology.
Joining Laura Haapio-Kirk on today’s episode are:
You can also check out our online exhibition of illustrated anthropology, which features work by our guests today, at https://illustratinganthropology.com/ or over on Instagram at @IllustratingAnthropology.
In this week’s episode, host Dr Jennifer Cearns is joined by Dr Megnaa Mehtta, Dr Adam Runacres, Jia Hui Lee and Nicolas Rasiulis (McGill University) to discuss their research looking at the relationships between humans and animals in various contexts around the world.
What’s the right distance to have between humans and other animal species? Who gets to decide? And how do these decisions impact those whose livelihoods depend upon proximity to animals, whether as hunter-gatherers or safari tourist guides? Finally, how can these questions inform conservation practices at a time when humans are rapidly encroaching upon the habitats of other species across the planet?
To subscribe to the Being Human Show, search for 'Being Human' in your preferred podcast player, or find us over on our RSS feed. This podcast is produced by Jennifer Cearns and Laura Haapio-Kirk, and edited by Antónia Gama, in partnership with the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. All rights reserved.
In this week’s episode, host Laura Haapio-Kirk is joined by Dr Annelieke Driessen (LSHM), Dr Simon Cohn (LSHM), and Dr Erica Borgstrom (Open University) to discuss their research understanding the forms of work that constitutes palliative care.
Covid-19 has pushed care, death, and dying to the forefront of many people’s minds. In this episode we talk with a research team about what it means to care, and how the understanding of care differs when thinking from a range of perspectives including from biomedical to more holistic approaches.
Today’s guests all work collaboratively on the ESRC-funded project ‘Forms of Care’ which focuses on an important feature of biomedicine – that of ‘not doing’ as an active and often deliberate aspect of care.
You can find today's guests on Twitter at @Annelie3ssen, @ericaborgstrom & @simoncohn, and the Forms of Care project tweets @formsofcare. You can also read more about the project and their research over on their project website.
To subscribe to the Being Human Show, search for ‘Being Human’ in your preferred podcast player, or find us over on our RSS feed . This podcast is produced by Jennifer Cearns and Laura Haapio-Kirk, and edited by Antónia Gama, in partnership with the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. All rights reserved.
In this week’s episode, host Jennifer Cearns is joined by Dr Beth Singler (University of Cambridge), Dr Laura Musgrave (Ronin Institute), and Dr Alexander Taylor (University of Cambridge & University of Winchester) to discuss the relationship between the human and the digital.
How do we incorporate smart technologies and artificial intelligence into our lives, and what are the impacts of this upon us as individuals, and upon society at large? Are robots replacing us as human beings? And if so, should we be worried about it? In this episode we set out to unpack some of these questions, and to examine what being human might look like in a 'post-human' world.
Today’s guests have all focused their research on questions around the digital, and how we as humans interact with the digital, machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, and ‘smart’ technologies.
To subscribe to the Being Human Show, search for ‘Being Human’ in your preferred podcast player, or find us over on our RSS feed . This podcast is produced by Jennifer Cearns and Laura Haapio-Kirk, and edited by Antónia Gama, in partnership with the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. All rights reserved.
In this week’s episode, host Laura Haapio-Kirk is joined by Dr Tamara Dragadze, Dr Igor Cherstich (University College London), and Dr Ashraf Hoque (University College London) to discuss the disproportionate impact COVID-19 has had upon BAME communities, and the implications of this both for society at large, and for anthropology as a discipline.
Why are some BAME communities affected so much worse than mainstream society? What’s missing in the way we’re discussing these issues at the moment? And what can this tell us about the relationship between the individual and the State? In this episode we set out to unpack some of these questions.
Today’s guests combine research expertise in issues surrounding ethnicity, migration and diaspora, political identity, and the role of the State:
At the beginning of the episode, Dr Hoque refers to several public reports on the impact of COVID-19 upon BAME communities. The Office of National Statistics published some initial findings in May 2020; and Public Health England also published their early findings in June 2020. They subsequently published a more comprehensive report after this episode was recorded, in August 2020.
To subscribe to the Being Human Show, search for ‘Being Human’ in your preferred podcast player, or find us over on our RSS feed . This podcast is produced by Jennifer Cearns and Laura Haapio-Kirk, and edited by Antónia Gama, in partnership with the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. All rights reserved.
In this week’s episode, host Dr Jennifer Cearns is joined by Professor Noel Salazar (University of Leuven), Dr Costanza Currò (University of Helsinki), and Dr Julius-Cezar MacQuarie (Central European University) to discuss the idea of ‘social distancing’: a term many of us have suddenly become familiar with in the light of COVID-19. What does it mean to socially distance oneself? What does that look like? And what are the ramifications of this at a societal and individual level? In this episode we set out to unpack some of these questions.
Our guests come to these questions from some pretty diverse research backgrounds:
To subscribe to the Being Human Show, search for ‘Being Human’ in your preferred podcast player, or find us over on our RSS feed . This podcast is produced by Jennifer Cearns and Laura Haapio-Kirk, and edited by Antónia Gama, in partnership with the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. All rights reserved.
