Welcome to the 5th episode of the second "Making Sense of EU" season! As with the season's other episodes, this one is also dedicated to the RED-SPINEL (https://redspinel.iee-ulb.eu/) research project, and its analysis of the challenges facing liberal democracy across the European Union.In this episode, we talk to professors Ramona Coman and Zolt Enyedi, as they share with us some of the initial findings and questions of their respective Horizon Europe-funded collective research projects, respectively RED-SPINEL and AUTHLIB.Zolte Enyedi, who leads the AUTHLIB (https://www.authlib.eu/) project, is a professor at the Department of Political Science of the Central European University. He studied comparative social sciences, history, sociology, and political science in Budapest and Amsterdam. His research focuses on party politics, comparative government, church-and-state relations, and political psychology. Ramona Coman, who leads the RED-SPINEL (https://redspinel.iee-ulb.eu/) project, is a professor of political science at the Université libre de Bruxelles and a visiting professor at the College of Europe in Bruges. She is also a former director and president of the Institut etudes européennes and she studied political science, comparative politics, and European studies in Brussels. Her research interests include EU institutions, the EU decision-making process, the Rule of Law, democratic transitions, and comparative politics.Throughout the episode, both Principal Investigators generously share how they came to set up their respective research agendas, and what the projects have allowed for so far.Overall, this is a particularly timely episode as it comes in the run-up to the June European election, and it explores among others how research imperatives and agendas intersect with political ones.

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Making sense of EU - Collective Research on Democracies in the run-up to the European elections

In this episode, host Ethne James Souch is joined by Professor Sara Mole, Noël Caliste, and Dr Sinead Murphy to explore how UCL is fostering inclusion and equity through intersectional initiatives focused on protected characteristics, mental health, and institutional change. This conversation highlights the work of Grand Challenges-funded projects such as Safer Space Conversations and Heads Together, designed to address the experiences of staff and students related to gender, LGBTQ+ identity, disability, and mental health. The episode also touches on frameworks like Athena Swan and the Race Equality Charter and discusses how lived experience and co-production are shaping more thoughtful, resilient approaches to equity at UCL.

 Date of episode recording: 2025-08-05
 Duration: 00:27:55
 Language of episode: English
 Presenter: Ethne James Souch
 Guests: Sara Mole; Noel Caliste; Sinead Murphy
 Producer: Annabelle Buckland
 Podcast owner: Ethne James Souch; Daisy Harvey; Siobhan Morris; Annabelle Buckland

Intersectionality at UCL: Lived Experience and Institutional Change

The LSE Phelan US Centre's regular podcast, The Ballpark, will be 10 years old in 2026. Ahead of our anniversary, and after more than 140 episodes speaking to academic experts on topics from across the social sciences, we'd like to find out what you think about the podcast with a listener survey.  

It only takes 10-15 minutes, and you'll have the chance to enter a prize draw to win £250 in vouchers.  

The Ballpark brings academic commentary to a wide audience, including to students, policymakers and a global community of academics. Recent highlights include The US’ changing relationship with NATO and Europe with Dr Celeste Wallander and an ongoing mini-series on AI and the US covering topics including AI’s effects on the workplace and the US-China AI race. 

Fill in our listener survey, here: https://forms.office.com/e/Vcj8V8uGM1  

Voucher prize draw terms and conditions are available here: https://www.lse.ac.uk/united-states/the-ballpark/ballpark-listener-survey-prize-terms-conditions-2025  

Thanks for listening! 

Take our Ballpark podcast survey and you could win £250 in vouchers!

In this episode, we discuss Annie Ernaux’s writing in The Years alongside a paper by Jenefer Robinson entitled ‘Style and Personality in the Literary Work’. We consider Robinson’s assertion that an author’s style expresses their personality, and set it in the context of influential views of style formulated by such modernists as Flaubert, Joyce, and T.S. Eliot, and by such literary theorists as Barthes, Bakhtin, and Kristeva. Ernaux’s own study of literature coincided with the heyday of literary theory in France. We use Robinson’s paper as a starting-point for reflection on the purposes and effects of the impersonal style Ernaux crafts in The Years.
 
Hosts: 
Scarlett Baron, Associate Professor of English at University College London
Alice Harberd, PhD student in the Philosophy Department at University College London.

Guests: 
Clare Carlisle, Professor of Philosophy at King’s College London.
Lucy O’Brien, Richard Wollheim Chair of Philosophy at University College London.
Emmanuel Campion-Dye, PhD student at University College London.

Transcript link here: https://share.transistor.fm/s/d080500d

Season 2, Episode 3 - Style and Personality: Jenefer Robinson

To talk about social media and politics, and how AI can help spread – or tackle – disinformation, the Phelan US Centre spoke to Dr Josephine Lukito, Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Journalism and Media. Her research specializes in malicious political language in the public sphere, focusing on cross-platform flows of messages and frames about global economic and political issues. 

The discussion covers how social media and AI are influencing political communication, disinformation, and election strategies in the US and globally and about the evolving role of platforms, algorithms, and AI tools in shaping elections and democratic governance.

This episode was produced by Chris Gilson and Avan Fata.  

Further reading and resources
•	Lukito, J., & Pevehouse, J. C. (2022). Competing for attention on Twitter during the 2012 and 2016 U.S. presidential debates. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 20(2), 125–138. 
•	Rodarte, A. K., & Lukito, J. (2024). Does Social Media Level the Political Field or Reinforce Existing Inequalities? Cartographies of the 2022 Brazilian Election. Political Communication, 42(3), 382–404. 
•	Lukito, J., Lee, T., Martin, Z., Glover, K., Hu, A., & Cui, Z. (2023). Connective action in Myanmar: a mixed-method analysis of Spring Revolution. Information, Communication & Society, 27(7), 1422–1440. 
•	Candidata - https://www.candidata24.org/ 

Take the Ballpark Listener survey and enter the prize draw for £250 in vouchers!

The Ballpark will be ten years old in 2026, and we want to hear from you to make the podcast even better, so we’re running a listener survey until 1 November 2025. 

•	Fill in our listener survey – it only takes 15 minutes – here: https://forms.office.com/e/Vcj8V8uGM1 
•	Voucher prize draw terms and conditions are available here: https://www.lse.ac.uk/united-states/the-ballpark/ballpark-listener-survey-prize-terms-conditions-2025 

LSE: The Ballpark | AI, social media, and political disinformation with Dr Josephine Lukito

In this episode, we discuss the experience and the representation of the self in time. We consider philosophical approaches to the question of personal change, focusing on a paper by Marya Schechtman entitled ‘Glad it Happened: Personal Identity and Ethical Depth’. Is the self diachronic, extending over time? Or is it episodic, identical with itself only for short periods? 

For Schechtman, self-experience is multiperspectival, comprising both temporally extended and temporally local perspectives; we contain many selves and this fact is central to the complexity of our moral life. We look closely at pages 137-182 of Annie Ernaux’s The Years to see whether the author’s rendering of her own self in time reflects such multiperspectivalism.
 
Hosts: 
Scarlett Baron, Associate Professor of English at University College London.
Alice Harberd, PhD student in the Philosophy Department at University College London.

Season 2, Episode 4 – The Self in Time: Marya Schechtman

Caswell Barry and Lucy Unwin talk about the neuroscience behind their new children’s book – Inside Your Brain. Inside Your Brain takes readers on an irreverent gallop through history to uncover ten ground breaking discoveries that led to our current understanding of how the brain works.

 Date of episode recording: 2025-10-02
 Duration: 00:47:48
 Language of episode: English
 Presenter: Steve Fleming, Selina Wray
 Guests: Caswell Barry, Lucy Unwin
 Producer: Patrick Robinson

Transcript link: 	
https://share.transistor.fm/s/e7042743/transcript.txt

Ep #22 Caswell Barry & Lucy Unwin talk about the neuroscience behind their new book

 Date of episode recording: 2025-10-02
 Duration: 00:47:48
 Language of episode: English
 Presenter: Steve Fleming, Selina Wray
 Guests: Caswell Barry, Lucy Unwin
 Producer: Patrick Robinson


Episode 23- Jenny Lange on the gothic history of neuroscience, a Halloween special

How much do we know about the mind, and is an autistic mind truly different? Professor Philip Schofield and Dr Sarah White, Associate Professor at UCL’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, answer these questions as they take a forensic look at the brain, and challenge outdated medical models and stereotypes of autism. This is essential listening for anyone interested in the intersections of philosophy, psychology and disability rights.


Credits:
Date of episode recording: 2025-10-23
Duration: 26:38
Language of episode: English
Presenter: Professor Philip Schofield
Guests: Dr Michael Woodrow
Producer: Justin Hardy
Names of the podcast owner and those who have vetted this content to be ready for publishing: 
Dr Paul Ayris, Margaret Stone, Lara Speicher, Helen Carney, Alison Fox

Transcript Link: https://otter.ai/u/cNUZVd1g2n4QXa1A1Ea4xxMvTIM

Season 2, Ep 1 - Exploring the Autistic Mind, featuring Dr Sarah White

In August 2025, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization held its 25th annual summit in Tianjin, China, with the country’s leader Xi Jinping, hosting representatives from more than 20 countries including Russia’s Vladimir Putin and India’s Narendra Modi. The absence of the United States in this gathering of global leaders may tell us about how China is competing with the US and building its own global order.

To discuss China’s strategic competition with the US, and how it is evolving under the Trump administration, in September 2025, the Phelan US Centre spoke to Professor Evan Medeiros, the Penner Family Chair in Asian Studies and the Cling Family Senior Fellow in US-China Relations at Georgetown University.

This episode was produced by Chris Gilson and Avan Fata.  

Further reading and resources

•	“China and Russia Will Not Be Split”, Michael McFaul and Evan S. Medeiros, Foreign Affairs, 4 April 2025
•	Medeiros, E. S., & Polk, A. (2025). China’s New Economic Weapons. The Washington Quarterly, 48(1), 99–123. 
•	“U.S.-China Relations for the 2030s: Toward a Realistic Scenario for Coexistence”, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace”, 17 October 2024
•	“The Delusion of Peak China”, Evan S. Medeiros, Foreign Affairs, 24 April 2024

Take the Ballpark Listener survey and enter the prize draw for £250 in vouchers!

The Ballpark will be ten years old in 2026, and we want to hear from you to make the podcast even better, so we’re running a listener survey until 1 November 2025. 

•	Fill in our listener survey – it only takes 15 minutes – here: https://forms.office.com/e/Vcj8V8uGM1 
•	Voucher prize draw terms and conditions are available here: https://www.lse.ac.uk/united-states/the-ballpark/ballpark-listener-survey-prize-terms-conditions-2025 


LSE: The Ballpark | US-China strategic competition with Professor Evan Medeiros

Will artificial intelligence cause huge unemployment? Will it free us from working? Will it replace us? In this special edition of LSE iQ, Sophie Mallett sits down with Professor Judy Wajcman, LSE’s Emeritus Professor of Sociology and one of the world’s leading voices on technology and society. Together, they explore one of the biggest questions of our time: what does artificial intelligence really mean for the future of work? 
 
In this wide-ranging conversation, Judy shares what really saves people time, talks about the fear of job replacement, and warns of the dangers of letting the most powerful tech companies design the future 
From Silicon Valley boardrooms to everyday lives, Judy challenges us to think differently about progress, productivity, and what we truly value as work. 
Contributors: Judy Wacjman  
Research links:  
From connection to optimisation 
How Silicon Valley sets time 
Feminism confronts AI: the gender relations of digitalisation 
LSE iQ is a university podcast by the London School of Economics and Political Science. 


Will AI free us from work?

L’IEE-ULB est un centre d’excellence interdisciplinaire en enseignement et recherche. Il se concentre sur les questions européennes.