Global Conversations, from Scotland

John Edward
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The Scottish Council on Global Affairs is the all-Scotland international relations institute. It marshals Scotland’s wide expertise on international affairs, supports the formulation of public policy, and provides a convening space for informed debate. The Council provides a forum to bring together the public, private and not-for-profit sectors with civil society and academic expertise to encourage dialogue, debate and the dissemination of research on issues of global importance. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. 12/18/2025

    Women, Peace and Security in the Age of Fragmentation

    Women, Peace and Security in the Age of Fragmentation In this podcast, Laura Wise, Kasia Houghton, and Fiona Campbell discuss an SCGA Insight report following a workshop - with their colleague Salma Yusuf - supported by Scottish Council on Global Affairs and the Peace and Conflict Resolution Platform (PeaceRep), held at Edinburgh Law School on 2 October 2025. They explore what Global Fragmentation and the contemporary Women Peace Security crisis/es means for women’s rights advocates in peace processes. The workshop brought together a group of individuals at multiple career stages from the worlds of diplomacy, governance, research, policy, practice, and activism to collectively make sense of this current moment in peacemaking, and generate new ideas to respond to a common challenge. This collective work included reflections on the past and present of peacemaking and WPS, and thinking about the future trajectory of feminist approaches to peace. Link to the blog by Salma Yusuf on Women’s Leadership in an Era of Multi-mediation and Global Fragmentation. Link to UN resolution (S/RES/1325) on women and peace and security from 31 October 2000.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    49 min

  2. 09/29/2025

    World of the Right: Radical Conservatism and World Order

    The audio track from a very timely lecture organised by the Stevenson Trust for Citizenship and co-hosted by the Scottish Council on Global Affairs. It took place at the University of Glasgow in April 2025. The speakers were Professors Rita Abrahamsen & Michael C. Williams, both at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, and both Leverhulme Visiting Professors in the United Kingdom. Professors Abrahamsen and Williams argue that while the radical Right is far from a unified political movement, its calls for sovereignty, civilizational orders, and multipolarity enable complex, strategic convergences with illiberal states such as China and Russia, as well as states and people in the Global South. The potential consequences for the future of the liberal world order remain wide-ranging. See also on YouTube. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1h 31m

  3. 02/07/2025

    "How nations like Scotland and Ireland can provide a hub for discussion on international affairs" - Leo Varadakar

    A live recording of First Minister John Swinney MSP and former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar with Principal Professor Dame Sally Mapstone, at an event held in the Booth Lecture Theatre to mark the transition of SCGA from the University of Glasgow to St Andrews for the next two years. “The fact that three institutions – the universities of St Andrews, Glasgow and Edinburgh – came together to found the Council is very good practice and not something I have seen in any other jurisdictions ” (Leo Varadkar) https://news.st-andrews.ac.uk/archive/first-minister-and-former-taoiseach-mark-st-andrews-leadership-of-scga/ John Swinney from 9m50s Leo Varadkar from 27m30s Questions and vote of thanks edited out for length, recording c/o University of St Andrews. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    53 min

  4. 12/04/2024

    A Global Perspective on National Security

    In this episode we look at the work undertaken by Prof. Andrew Neal and his colleagues on National Security globally. Breaking new ground a corpus and dataset of national security documents has been produced, with SCGA support, offering unprecedented insights into the landscape of international security. This collection encompasses 575 documents from 113 countries, spanning the years 1987 to 2024. It represents the first-ever comprehensive corpus of public national security and defence documents on a global scale, providing a unique window into how countries across the world conceptualise and prioritise their security challenges. The complete dataset has a DOI and is available through Edinburgh DataShare, the University of Edinburgh’s digital repository. It is released under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 licence, meaning it can be freely shared and adapted with attribution. See scga.scot for more details, the work of Prof. Ole Wæver on Threat is also referenced. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    28 min

  5. 11/04/2024

    The next 100 years of peace in the greater Middle East: Beyond the 1923 peace settlement and the reconfiguration of the East-West relations

    We are joined by Dr Ilia Xypolia, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Aberdeen; and Dr Zana Gul, Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Stirling. They discuss their SCGA-funded project on the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, the first negotiated peace settlement post-World War One, its aftermath and its lessons for the greater Middle East. Considered by some as the introduction of partition as a policy, and as the “birth certificate” of modern Turkey, the Treaty created a legacy that persists today. While the Treaty also marked the beginning of the end of British foreign policy predominance, this episode discusses the UK’s persistent and discrete role in the greater Middle East today, the place of Turkey at the hinge of regional affairs, and touches upon aspects of gender. It also looks at how the Treaty prefigures the reconfiguration of power and influence that continues in global affairs today - with lessons and opportunities for Scotland’s role too. Also mentioned: United States Institute of Peace and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    48 min

  6. 07/24/2024

    Human Rights Collaboration between Academia and Civil Society

    Recorded live at the Glasgow Human Rights Network’s Early Career Researcher event, Dr David Scott talks with Dr Elaine Webster (Strathclyde University), Prof Bruce Adamson (University of Glasgow), and Mhairi Snowden (Human Rights Consortium Scotland) on how to bring academia and practice together to work on human rights in Scotland.  On 13 June 2024, the Glasgow Human Rights Network hosted its first Early Career Work-in-Progress Workshop at Strathclyde University, bringing together PhD students from the Universities of Glasgow, Strathclyde, Glasgow Caledonian University, and the University of the West of Scotland to present their work and make new connections with other early career academics. On this episode of the SCGA podcast, the Network presents the workshop’s keynote panel on Human Rights Work in Practice, with Dr David Scott (Postdoctoral Research Associate in International Law and Governance at the Glasgow Centre for International Law and Security, University of Glasgow, and the Scottish Council on Global Affairs) joined by Dr Elaine Webster (Reader in Law at Strathclyde University), Prof Bruce Adamson (former Professor of Legal Practice at University of Glasgow and former Children and Young People’s Commissioner for Scotland), and Mhairi Snowden (Director at the Human Rights Consortium Scotland) to discuss their careers in human rights, the successful collaborations they have seen between academics and civil society, and the challenges and obstacles that can be encountered when trying to work together. Supported by a SCGA Connections Award, this Early Career Workshop was the third and final relaunch event for the Glasgow Human Rights Network, which aims to foster new connections between academics, civil society organisations, and community and activist groups working on human rights issues across Scotland. You can learn more about the Glasgow Human Rights Network at https://www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/glasgowhumanrightsnetwork/ and on Twitter/X at @GlasgowHumRts. You can also join the Network’s mailing list by contacting GHRN@glasgow.ac.uk. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    41 min

  7. 04/04/2024

    The Long Road to Children’s Rights in Scotland

    On 16 January 2024, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act 2024 entered into law, ending a multi-year push by civil society to see international children’s rights written into Scots law. On this episode of the SCGA podcast, Dr David Scott (Postdoctoral Research Associate in International Law and Governance at the Glasgow Centre for International Law and Security, University of Glasgow, and the Scottish Council on Global Affairs) is joined by Professor Bruce Adamson (Professor in Practice at the School of Law, University of Glasgow and former Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland) and Josh Kennedy (former Chair of the Scottish Youth Parliament) to discuss the long road leading up to the Act’s passage, the obstacles the Act faced – including a successful challenge to a previous draft of the Act before the UK Supreme Court - and the hopes they have for the future of children’s rights in Scotland. For more on Scotland’s human rights plans, you can find a previous episode of the SCGA podcast on the Scottish Human Rights Bill at https://scga.scot/2023/10/24/human-rights-scots-law/.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    58 min

  8. 03/19/2024

    Good Global Citizens? What are Scots thinking?

    In this podcast, John Edward speaks to Prof. Tom Scotto and Dr Claire Duncanson of the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh respectively, on their work on public attitudes in Scotland. In the first detailed study of its kind, they have looked at attitudes across nationalist and unionist persuasions to key international issues of today – wellbeing, global justice, colonial legacies, military force and development spending. In particular they have looked at attitudes to the feminist approach to foreign policy supported by the Scottish Government, among others. A full report “Good Global Citizens”, and open-source data set and code book are available at scga.scot.   Further reading: The structure of foreign policy attitudes in transatlantic perspective: Comparing the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany Scotland the Brave? An authentic, ambitious and accountable Feminist Foreign Policy   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    42 min
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About

The Scottish Council on Global Affairs is the all-Scotland international relations institute. It marshals Scotland’s wide expertise on international affairs, supports the formulation of public policy, and provides a convening space for informed debate. The Council provides a forum to bring together the public, private and not-for-profit sectors with civil society and academic expertise to encourage dialogue, debate and the dissemination of research on issues of global importance. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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