In the 100th Episode of the Declarations Podcast, Iman is joined by special guest Lucia de los Angeles Diaz Genao and panellist Matias Volonterio to discuss: what can we do about violence against activists? How do we protect the marginalised who raise their voices?

This week, host Muna Gasim and panellist Neema Jayasinghe speak with Chamnan Chanruang from Thailand’s Future Forward party about the anti-monarchy protests currently ongoing in the country. Chanruang is a former Political Science and Law lecturer at Chiang Mai University, and has a professional background as a human rights activist. He has taken a stand against coup d’états and was also a key driver in the movement to finalise the draft act for the Chiang Mai Self-Governing Region. He was previously appointed as the Chairperson of Amnesty International Thailand.

For this week's episode, host Muna Gasim and panellist Ashling Williams are joined by Alex Raikes, the Strategic Director of Stand Against Racism & Inequality, for a discussion on the escalating and pervasive crisis of hate crimes in the United Kingdom. Alex discusses both the long-term prevalence and event-related spikes of hate-based crimes and incidents facing marginalized communities across the country. This episode also dives into the need for preventative education, research, and action to work towards a society that celebrates and protects the rights of every individual.

This week, host Muna Gasim and producer Sam Baron are joined by Zumretay Arkin, the Program and Advocacy Manager at the World Uyghur Congress, an umbrella organization based Berlin, Germany that advocates for the rights of Uyghur people, an ethnic group from Xinjiang in Northwest China. Despite the severe human rights abuses taking place against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in China, Beijing remains the host of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, which has vast political and humanitarian implications. Muna, Sam, and Zumretay discuss the atrocities being committed against the Uyghur people, the political power of the Olympics, and how governments, corporations, athletes, journalists, and citizens can take action.

For our first episode of 2021, we return to the 2018-19 Sudanese Revolution that overthrew Omar al-Bashir and his National Congress Party. Joined by Dinan Alasad and Aida Abbashar, the conversation highlights the course of the revolution, the importance of international attention and the mobilizing and uprising of Sudan’s youth. Our guests identify both the power of social media movements such as #BlueForSudan and #BlueForMattar as well as reminding us that, in areas like women’s rights, the story is far from complete.

In the past few months, online activism has exploded, enabling us to build transnational solidarity and make cross-topical connections like never before. In this episode, we talk about the possibilities and sometimes fraught experience of online activism,  the importance of doing due diligence, and guarding against burnout.

For some of us, these few months have been punctuated by heavy conversations about race around dinner tables, living rooms, maybe even over calls and social media comment threads. They've been with friends, family, strangers. Some of them have gone well, and many have not. These conversations require all parties to reach across generations, cultures and other forces that shape our worldviews, in order to build a more progressive, inclusive future.  In this episode, our panelists discuss why it is crucial that we keep engaging in these conversations, and provide some tips as to how we can ensure that they are as productive as possible. We hope that this episode offers a safe space to reflect and learn together from the difficult conversations we've been having in our own lives.

Have you heard the phrase 'abolish the police' being thrown around, but you're not really sure what this demand actually entails?  In this episode, we break down the ideas and intellectual histories of arguments to abolish, defund, and reform policing as an institution. We hope our discourse is helpful to you in figuring out where you stand in conversations around race and the criminal justice system. This is a companion piece to our previous episode, 'We Need to Talk: The Prison-Industrial Complex", and aims to give you an insight into the ways in which the criminal justice system can be reformed and detached from the racist structures that currently underpin it.

The prison-industrial complex. What does it mean? Who does it benefit? Who suffers? This week, we discuss how systemic racism manifests in the United States in the form of the prison-industrial complex. From its historical origins in slave patrols to the war on drugs, the criminal justice system has systematically entrapped Black bodies and monetized their labour to serve corporate interests. This is only the beginning: we encourage you to take a look at the resources on our website to learn more.

Join host Niyousha and panelists Matt and Muna as they interview Jacinta Gonzalez about her current work regarding hostile environments in the US, as well as discuss the Ellis Island legacy and the expansive infrastructures of technologies of oppression.

From 25th November to 4th December 2019, lecturers in 60 universities across the UK went on strike. Declarations hit the picket lines of Cambridge to find out why academics were swapping their blackboards for banners. 

Join us as we interview Maya Goodfellow, author of 'Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats', for Part 1 of our series about the racialization of immigration. In this enlightening and extremely topical episode, we discuss security discourses of the 'scary' migrant, racial capitalism and the racialization of citizenship. 

This episode focuses on the UK’s policy of deterring refugees and migrants from seeking asylum by extending the Home Office’s domestic “hostile environment” beyond state borders and into mainland Europe. We raise a number of questions on ethical and legal grounds. Our guest Marta Welander, founder of Refugee Rights Europe and PhD candidate and visiting lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University, is here to discuss her work and research toward these issues.