On the International Women´s Day, our podcast series’ host Lynda Iroulo interviews Prof. Dr. h.c. Jutta Allmendinger, Ph.D., President of the WZB. Listen in, as we discuss her journey to the presidency, the driving factors of gender inequality, and her vision for the WZB.

Find a short transcription of the interview below or listen to the full one here:

Iroulo: You became a professor of Sociology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Have you always wanted to be in academia?

Allmendinger: Most certainly not. Up until the age of fifteen, I wanted to become an architect like my father. Then I found out that the study of architecture is really boring because you only have to draw lines but not houses. So, I started to study Sociology and I was immediately into it.

Iroulo: What was your research focus then and how has it changed over time?

Continue reading “Interview: Jutta Allmendinger on her Career and Gender Inequality”

In this episode, Lynda Iroulo talks to Mervyn Frost, Professor of International Relations at the Department of War Studies, King´s College London. If you want to find out more about the debates and authors in International Relations (IR) that influenced Mervyn´s career most, his first unexpected teaching experience and why he thinks traffic in Berlin is much more civilized than in London, we’ve got your back!

Find a short transcription of the interview below or listen to the full one here:

Iroulo: What brought you to the WZB and for how long will you be here?

Frost: Well, I used to be a Professor at the University of Kent, and I came here in 1999 for the first time. Professor Dieter Rucht had organized a seminar on global citizenship, and I remember being very impressed with the institution and of course with Berlin. I have always had in mind that I would like to spend a sabbatical leave here and now I am doing exactly that. So, that is kind of the background of it, but as you said in your introduction, I have been interested in ethics in IR for many years now, I think it is over 40 years. The Global Governance Unit has got an interest, not only in the technicalities of Governance, but also in the normative aspect and the ethical aspect, so I thought this would be a nice home for me to work with sympathetic scholars who are all working in the same field.

Iroulo: What will you be working on during your stay at the WZB?

Continue reading “Interview: Mervyn Frost on Practice Theory and unexpectedly teaching IR”