Almost two years after the fall of the Assad regime, where is Syria heading? In this episode of the International Risk Podcast, producer and researcher Andrea Crafoord-Wiklund flips the script and interviews regular host Dominic Bowen, who joins from Damascus after a week of meetings with Syrian government ministries. Dominic shares what he is seeing…
More than five years after the Taliban returned to power, millions of Afghan women and girls remain shut out of education, work and public life, while governments around the world are quietly normalising relations with Kabul. In this episode of the International Risk Podcast, host Dominic Bowen speaks with Shaharzad Akbar, former chairperson of the…
Shaharzad Akbar is an Afghan human rights defender and the founder and executive director of Rawadari, an independent organisation that documents human rights violations in Afghanistan and advocates for accountability and justice. She previously chaired the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), where she took on abuses by all parties to the conflict and pushed…
Anders Sannerstedt is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Lund University. He earned his PhD in 1979 and has spent his career studying Swedish politics. His research covers public opinion and electoral behavior, political negotiations (especially in the Swedish parliament), the law-making process, populism, and local politics. His 1992 book, Förhandlingar…
Maryanne Wolf is a cognitive neuroscientist and child development scholar who studies how the brain learns to read. She is a distinguished fellow and visiting professor at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, where she directs the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice, and she previously founded the Center for Reading…
Sweden’s voters handed the centre-left opposition a win by just three seats, 176 to 173, and yet no one can form a government. The Sweden Democrats lost ground at the ballot box, but they may still hold the key to what happens next. With investors, NATO allies and Ukraine supporters watching closely, this is a…
In this episode, Dominic sits down with Dr. Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive neuroscientist at UCLA who has spent her career studying what she calls “the reading brain.” Maryanne explains why reading doesn’t come naturally to us the way language or vision does. It’s a skill the brain has to build, circuit by circuit, and one…
The loss of sovereign territory has traditionally been understood as a military event, for example, through an invasion, an occupation or a flag raised over conquered ground. But a different and arguably more dangerous form of territorial loss has been unfolding for years, hidden inside routine economic decisions that, taken individually, look entirely reasonable. This…
Dr. Holly Bell is an economist and author whose work sits at the intersection of economics, international security, and geopolitical risk. A former professor and academic administrator at the University of Alaska Anchorage, she studies the economic vulnerabilities of resource-rich states and the risks posed by foreign investment in critical infrastructure. She is the author…
In this episode of The International Risk Podcast, host Dominic Bowen is joined by Dr. Holly Bell, economist, former professor and academic administrator at the University of Alaska Anchorage, and author of the geopolitical novel Occupied Alaska, to unpack how economic dependence on foreign capital can constrain a nation’s sovereignty just as effectively as military…
