Welcome to the Transformative Podcast, which takes the year 1989 as a starting point to think about social, economic,
and cultural transformations in the wake of deep historical caesuras on a European and global scale.

This podcast is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License
and is available on iTunesGoogle PodcastsSpotifyAmazon Music/AudibleListenNotesPodBean

We thank Radio ORANGE for lifting us off with our podcasting efforts through their public training program.

For questions and comments on this podcast, please contact the podcast producer Irena Remestwenski at irena.remestwenski(at)univie.ac.at

The Transformative Podcast is listed in the wisspod network; Logo: Sven Sedivy (@graphorama), Creative Commons CC-BY-ND 

Episode 47: SPECIAL ISSUE. Knowledgeable Youth

06.03.2024

Over the past year and a half, RECET has carried out its very first youth project titled "Knowledgeable Youth: Science Communication in Times of War". Together with our partners Eurozine and Radio Orange, we reached out to Ukrainian refugee youngsters living in Vienna and invited them to get to know the world of academic research and science communication. You are listening to the first of four podcast episodes produced by Ukrainian youths who arrived in Vienna following the start of the Russian invasion. The youngsters interview the founder of their school Iryna Khamayko and share insights into their lives and diverse school experiences after arriving in Vienna as refugees.

Project lead (RECET): Irena Remestwenski
Project lead (Eurozine): Carine Chen
Youngsters: FREE PEOPLE School 
Organisational assistance & PR: Leonid Motz

Originally produced by Margit Wolfsberger and Mischa Hendel for Radio Orange. Remixed by Leonid Motz.

Funded by the Cultural Department (MA7) of the City of Vienna.

Episode 46: Sea, Sex and Tourism in Socialist Yugoslavia

14.02.2024

Who were the Yugoslav Casanovas of mass tourism? What are the practices of othering and meanings behind romantic and sexual encounters of local young men and foreign female tourists in the Yugoslav Adriatic? In this episode, Anita Buhin tells Jelena Đureinović about so-called galebovi (seagulls) in socialist Yugoslavia and various economic, cultural and social aspects of this phenomenon, typical for the broader Mediterranean region and the development of mass tourism.

Dr. Anita Buhin is a cultural historian of socialist Yugoslavia in the Mediterranean context whose work focuses on the relations between popular culture and tourism. She is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History at the NOVA University of Lisbon and holds a PhD from the European University Institute. Her book Yugoslav Socialism ‘Flavoured with Sea, Flavoured with Salt’: Mediterranization of Yugoslav Popular Culture in the 1950s and 1960s under Italian Influences was published with Srednja Europa in Zagreb in 2022.

Episode 45: Upward Mobility through Higher Education in Socialist Poland

24.01.2024

What obstacles did first generation students face in socialist Poland? And how might their biographies help us design affirmative action drives today? In this episode of the Transformative Podcast, Dr. Agata Zysiak tells Rosamund Johnston (RECET) how political reform of higher education is never enough by itself to overhaul membership of a country’s intellectual elite. Instead, these reforms rely on interpretation and implementation at multiple levels—both within and beyond the university’s walls. Ultimately, Zysiak explains that there came to exist a “clash of privileges” in socialist Poland, between state-support for working class and peasant students on the one hand, and the intelligentsia protecting their privileged claim to the university on the other, with the effect that both limited each other.

Buy Agata's newest book Limiting Privilege. Upward Mobility Within Higher Education in Socialst Poland and receive 30% off the retail price when you order directly from Purdue University Press and use the discount code PURDUE30.

Dr. Agata Zysiak is a historical sociologist at RECET, University of Vienna, and the University of Łódź. She is the author of the award-winning book, Punkty za pochodzenie (Points for Social Origin); coauthor of the main publication about Łódź available in English, From Cotton and Smoke; and the author of Wielki przemysł, wielka cisza (Great Industry, Great Silence), which maps Łódź industry and its collapse. She has been a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), Wayne State University (Detroit), Free University (Berlin), and Central European University (Budapest), and she was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton between 2017 and 2018.

Episode 44: Will Ukrainian refugees return?

03.01.2024

Ukrainian refugees make up a staggering number - over 6 million globally. Millions more left before 2022 as labour migrants. What are these people's intentions for returning? Who will return, and who will stay? Yermakova, based on her RECET blog article, discusses insights from her fieldwork data. She goes deep into the interpersonal dynamics and psychological factors, explaining why survey answers might differ from actual outcomes.

Olena Yermakova is an interdisciplinary researcher focusing on migration and is currently a Ukraine fellow at RECET. She recently published a fieldwork-based article, "The Way Home", at Eurozine, republished by Transformative Blog.

Episode 43: Closed Borders and the Open Society

06.12.2023

Can there be an open, liberal, democratic society behind closed borders? In this episode, Frank Wolff argues that erecting ever higher walls and implementing violent border regimes has a corrosive effect on democracy and rule of law in the societies these measures are allegedly meant to protect.

Frank Wolff leads the research group "Internalizing Borders: The Social and Normative Consequences of the European Border Regime" at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF: Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung) at Bielefeld University. Together with Volker M. Heins, he recently published the book Hinter Mauern: Geschlossene Grenzen als Gefahr für die offene Gesellschaft ("Behind Walls: Closed Borders as a Danger for the Open Society", Suhrkamp 2023)