Declarations: The Human Rights Podcast

Resisting Algorithms: Human Rights in the Age of Platforms

In a digital age, where content creators are booming, shaping culture, influencing politics, and building entire livelihoods online, we find ourselves in a world governed by algorithms we didn’t design, and often can’t even see. So what does it mean to resist? From viral content that defies the odds, to artists and activists who quietly tweak the system to stay visible, today we explore the subtle and strategic ways resistance unfolds in online spaces.This final episode of the series cultivates a compelling discussion from a team of student researchers at the Centre for Governance and Human Rights. They are currently pursuing a project titled: ‘How are content creators employing everyday practices to resist and adapt to algorithmic governance?’ Rosie Freeman is a finalist reading Human, Social, and Political Sciences- specialising in Sociology. Eunbin Bang, an MPhil Politics and International Studies Candidate at Cambridge University, further holds an Honours in Political Science from McGill University. Muhammad Al Sohail, an MPhil graduate in Sociology of New Media and Culture from the University of Cambridge, holds research specialising in how digital environments shape both social structures and collective consciousness. Website: https://www.cghr.polis.cam.ac.uk/research-themes/global-exp-alg-gov/ Rosie Freeman - ref49@cam.ac.uk Eunbin Bang- eb2012@cam.ac.uk Connect with Us Subscribe below for more regular and profound discussions. Connecting practitioners, activists, and students together to dissect the compelling intersections related to human rights and social justice.Subscribe on  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/33zeclUn2wMUIxRjsOApPW  Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/declarations-the-human-rights-podcast/id1178474117   Follow us on X: @DeclarationsPod Instagram: @declarationspodcast  LinkedIn: Declarations: The Human Rights Podcast  Share your thoughts using #declarationspodcast  Email us at info@declarationspod.com  Episode CreditsHost: Muhammad Ali  Producer: Muhammad Ali and Sarah Awan Executive Producer: Sarah Awan Show Notes: Yusan Ghebremeskel Publisher and Communications Manager: Evie Nicholson Editor: Max Parnell  

Justice in the Balance: Can the Law Save Democracy?

In this episode, we explore the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) — often hailed as the “conscience of Europe” and one of the most successful human rights institutions in the world. But in an era of democratic backsliding, populist politics, and eroding faith in institutions, what does “justice” look like today?Drawing on eight years of fieldwork with advocates, lawyers, and judges at the ECHR, Professor Jessica Greenberg’s Justice in the Balance examines how the Court functions both as a bureaucratic machine and as a moral ideal. Through her ethnographic lens, she reveals the tensions between law’s promise and its practice — between the aspiration of human rights and the limits of the institutions meant to protect them.This conversation probes the contradictions at the heart of the European project: Can legal institutions still serve as engines of democracy and hope, or have they become hollow symbols of a fading order?About the Guest: Jessica Greenberg is an associate professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Prior to coming to UIUC, Greenberg was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, and an Assistant Professor in Communication Studies at Northwestern University. She recently earned a Master of Studies in Law at the College of Law, University of Illinois. She is also currently the Co-Editor of the Political and Legal Anthropology Review (PoLAR).Website: https://anthro.illinois.edu/directory/profile/jrgreenbEmail: jrgreenb@illinois.eduConnect with Us:Subscribe below for more regular and profound discussions. Connecting practitioners, activists, and students together to dissect the compelling intersections related to human rights and social justice.  Subscribe on  :Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/33zeclUn2wMUIxRjsOApPW  Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/declarations-the-human-rights-podcast/id1178474117  Follow us on X: @DeclarationsPod Instagram: @declarationspodcast  LinkedIn: Declarations: The Human Rights Podcast Share your thoughts using #declarationspodcast  Email us at info@declarationspod.com  Episode Credits Host: Ed Parker Producer: Ed Parker and Sarah Awan Executive Producer: Sarah Awan Show Notes: Yusan Ghebremeskel Publisher and Communications Manager: Evie Nicholson Editor: Max Parnell 

The Sociology of Humanity: Benjamin P Davis and “Another Humanity”

What does it mean to imagine another humanity in a century marked by war, displacement, and deep inequality? In this episode, we sit down with Benjamin P. Davis, author of Another Humanity: Decolonial Ethics from Du Bois to Arendt. Davis traces shifting ideas of “the human” through the works of W. E. B. Du Bois, Édouard Glissant, Sylvia Wynter and Edward Said—thinkers who redefined human rights and humanism in the face of empire and exclusion. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s post-war correspondence with Karl Jaspers, Davis invites us to reflect on what a decolonial ethics of humanity might look like today. Together, we ask: how might we live into Glissant’s question of whether we have the right, and the means, to imagine another dimension of humanity?About the Guest Benjamin Davis is a scholar of political theory, decolonial ethics, and the global histories of human rights. He previously held fellowships with the Department of African American Studies at Saint Louis University and the Centre for Ethics at the University of Toronto.He is the author of three books. His first, Simone Weil’s Political Philosophy: Field Notes from the Margins, repositions the mystic Simone Weil as a major political thinker. His second book, Choose Your Bearing: Édouard Glissant, Human Rights and Decolonial Ethics, interprets poet and theorist Édouard Glissant as a vital voice for contemporary human rights practice. His most recent book, Another Humanity: Decolonial Ethics from Du Bois to Arendt, offers a defense of “the human” and “humanity” amid today’s critical theoretical debates.Davis was awarded William A. Starr fellowship for innovative thinking in journalism.Website: https://benjaminpdavis.com/Email: benjamin.davis [at] tamu.edu. Connect with Us Subscribe below for more regular and profound discussions. Connecting practitioners, activists, and students together to dissect the compelling intersections related to human rights and social justice.  X: @DeclarationsPod Instagram: @declarationspodcast  LinkedIn: Declarations: The Human Rights Podcast Share your thoughts using #declarationspodcast  Email us at info@declarationspod.com  Episode CreditsHost: Bhumika Billa, Guest PanellistProducer: Bhumika Billa and Shubham JainExecutive Producer: Sarah Awan Show Notes: Yusan Ghebremeskel Publisher and Communications Manager: Evie Nicholson Editor: Max Parnell

Shifting Tides: How the Media Landscape and Press Freedom Are Changing Worldwide

Welcome back to Declarations!In this episode, we’re joined by renowned journalist Kalpana Jain to explore how the media landscape has evolved and how press freedom is shifting across the globe. From the West to South Asia, we unpack the complex forces shaping what gets reported, whose voices are amplified, and how journalism is being redefined today. The media has undergone a seismic shift over the past two decades, technologically, politically, and economically. Today, journalism faces mounting constraints: declining independence, a shrinking space for investigative work, all amid escalating risks for journalists worldwide. At the same time, newsrooms are evolving rapidly to combat the rise of misinformation in an increasingly complex digital environment. About the guest:Kalpana Jain is a senior journalist and currently senior ethics and religion editor at The Conversation US, a global news and commentary-based website.She has covered a wide range of issues both in the U.S. and internationally. She was senior education editor at The Conversation US, before moving into her current role. She worked as a writer and researcher at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School  She was part of a small, select team for a flagship program of Harvard Business School researching 50 years of women at HBS.She worked for many years as a reporter and editor at India’s leading national daily, The Times of India. Her reporting played a significant role in elevating public health as an important topic of news coverage. Based on her reporting, she was selected a Nieman Fellow in Global Health Reporting in 2009. She has taught case-writing at Harvard. She has conducted workshops teaching scholars at Harvard Divinity School, Stanford University, on how to write for the general public. She has also conducted such a workshop for religion scholars at the annual conference of American Academy of Religion.She is an alumna of Harvard Divinity School and Harvard Kennedy School. She holds a  Master’s in Theological Studies and a Master’s in Public Administration.  In 2010, she was awarded William A. Starr fellowship for innovative thinking in journalism and John Kenneth Galbraith Fellowship for outstanding academic and professional achievements at Harvard.Subscribe below for more regular and profound discussions. Connecting practitioners, activists, and students together to dissect the compelling intersections related to human rights and social justice.  Share your thoughts using #declarationspodcast  Email us at info@declarationspod.com   Episode Credits Host: Muhammad Ali Sohail Producer: Muhammad Ali Sohail and Sarah Awan Executive Producer: Sarah Awan Show Notes: Yusan Ghebremeskel Publisher and Communications Manager: Evie Nicholson Editor: Max Parnell  

Invisible Chains: How Censorship, Misinformation and Propaganda Shape Stockholm Syndrome in African States

Welcome back to the second episode of Season 9 of Declarations!We are often informed to the terrorising, oppressive and distressing effects of Human Rights abuses across the continent of Africa. However, what happens in the rare cases that citizens don't know they're being abused? By exploring the implicitly powerful weapon of censorship, misinformation and mass propaganda, we can observe how patriotic, anti-western narratives succeed in instilling hope and nationalistic pride, rather than terror, to these inhabitants. Farooq Adamu Kperogi is a Nigerian-American professor, author, media scholar, newspaper columnist, blogger and activist. Professor Kperogi's research broadly explores the intersection between communication in a global context and the singularities of the communicative practices of marginal groups within it. He is interested in the transnational, mass-mediated, online discourses of marginalised diasporas in the West, which he studies by examining the alternative and citizen online journalistic practices of previously disempowered Third World ethnoscapes whose voluntary geographic displacement to the Western core imbues them with the cultural and social capital to be vanguards for potentially transformative cross-border exchanges with their homelands. Subscribe below for more regular and profound discussions, connecting practitioners, activists, and students together to dissect the compelling intersections related to human rights and social justice.  Share your thoughts using #declarationspodcast  Email us at info@declarationspod.com   Episode Credits Host: Ed Parker & Yusan Ghebremeskel Producer: Yusan Ghebremeskel Executive Producer: Sarah Awan Show Notes: Yusan Ghebremeskel Publisher and Communications Manager: Evie Nicholson Editor: Max Parnell