‘Declarations’is a human rights podcast
brought to you by the Centre of Governance and Human Rights at the University of Cambridge
Season 9: human rights in the age of polycrisis has launched
latest episodes:
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
Name: Kalpana Jain, Journalist
Bio:
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.
Website: https://kalpanajain.com/
Email: kalpana.jainn@gmail.com
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.
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Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/declarations-the-human-rights-podcast/id1178474117
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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
About the Guest
Farooq Kperogi, Professor and Author
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 marginalized 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
Website: https://facultyweb.kennesaw.edu/fkperogi/index.php
Email: fkperogi@kennesaw.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.
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 & Yusan Ghebremeskel
Producer: Yusan Ghebremeskel
Executive Producer: Sarah Awan
Show Notes: Yusan Ghebremeskel
Publisher and Communications Manager: Evie Nicholson
Editor: Max Parnell
From campus protests against the Vietnam War to campaigns like Save Darfur, American activists have long invoked the language of human rights to press for change at home and abroad. But has this discourse meaningfully shaped U.S. foreign policy—or has it always taken a backseat to strategic interests? In this episode, Ed Parker speaks with Andrew Preston, an acclaimed historian of American foreign relations post 1890, to trace the role of human rights in American protest movements and foreign policy debates, asking whether humanitarian ideals have ever truly guided U.S. decision-making. Together, they explore key moments when human rights language surged, examine its retreat in recent years, and consider how American power has influenced—and at times undermined—the broader global human rights regime. Looking ahead, they ask whether we are witnessing a lasting shift in U.S. foreign policy priorities or simply the latest chapter in a long cycle of competing values and interests.
About the Guest
Andrew Preston, Historian
Organisation: University of Virginia, Department of History (currently)
Andrew Preston is an eminent author and scholar of history, with experiences teaching American history at Cambridge for nearly 20 years, as well as his distinguished editorial positions of the journals Modern American History, The Historical Journal, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, and Diplomacy & Statecraft. His work particularly resides on the American ideas shaping foreign policy, the instruments of policymaking in Washington, and the wider implications of this for both elite and popular camps, domestic politics, and culture. In this spirit, an interesting intersection of human rights ideals in both the logic and strategies of foreign policy making are explored.
Website: https://history.virginia.edu/people/andrew-preston
Email: amp33@virginia.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.
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
LISTEN BACK TO SEASON 8: HORROR, HOPE & HUMAN
September 2024
Human rights volunteers: lessons from due dilligance during qatar 2022
Join our host, Iman, in conversation with Lucy Amis from the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Sport & Human Rights (CSHR), alongside our panellist and podcast lead Shubham Jain, as they discuss the need for mainstreaming human rights in sports, and how the CSHR’s innovative initiative, the ‘Human Rights Volunteer Programme’, can help promote human rights during sports events and offer a means for remedy for violations.
September 2024
Advancing rights through protest & revolution in syria
Join guest host, Dounia, in conversation with Omar Alshogre as they discuss the relationship between activism and human rights in the context of the Syrian revolution. What is the future of the Syrian revolution? Has it fallen into oblivion? Will Syrians ever succeed in getting rid of a regime which has been plaguing the country for more than 50 years?
August 2024
UNLearning gender-based violence
Join our guest host, Maryam, in conversation with special guest Salman Sufi, founder of the Salman Sufi Foundation, as they discuss gender-based violence in Pakistan. How can the systemic infrastructure perpetuate such violence, and what can human rights activists do to mitigate these harms and close some of these systemic gaps?
August 2024
Prisons, captivity & Justice in India
Join our host, Iman, in conversation with special guests, Uma Chakravarti and Suchitra Vijayan, and our panellist Jigisha Bhattacharya, as they discuss incarceration and its politics in contemporary India, focusing on addressing concerns such as human rights violations, democratic oversight and the silencing of dissident voices.
August 2024
protecting the protector
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?
July 2024
Politics & human rights: with the politics or against the politics
In this episode of Declarations, our host Iman is joined by special guest Siri Gloppen and panellist Charlotte Abercrombie to discuss global democratic backsliding and its impact on human rights. They evaluate the role of courts in safeguarding human rights and the risks of politicising fundamental freedoms. This episode comes at a crucial period, where democracies appear to be in peril worldwide.
August 2024
human rights: of, by, for which people?
In this episode, our host Iman is joined by special guest Tarah Demant and panellist Tess Hargarten to discuss the impact of Western hegemony on modern human rights and the development of human rights organizations worldwide. This topic is especially relevant at the current moment, when multiple contentious wars are raging with more and more human rights violations coming to light.
August 2024
introducing horror, hope & human
Who are human rights for? Where is the ‘human’ in ‘human rights’? What have we learned about human rights conceptually, as well as in practice, over the last 75 years? In this brief first episode, our host Iman introduces our theme for this season, and gives an overview of the questions we seek to probe while reflecting on the 75 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Full ‘Declarations’ archive Can be Listened to Below:
- October 2025
- May 2023
- April 2023
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- July 2021
- June 2021
- May 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- August 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- November 2019
- March 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- March 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- December 2016