A show about human rights coming to you every week from the Cambridge Centre of Governance and Human Rights.
Tune in each week as we explore how the concept and practice of human rights can remain fit-for-purpose and co-evolve with the changing world order, joined by fascinating guests from the University of Cambridge and around the world.
Resisting Algorithms: Human Rights in the Age of Platforms
In a digital age, where content creators are booming, shaping culture, influencing politics, and building entire livelihoods online, we find ourselves in a world governed by algorithms we didn’t design, and often can’t even see.
So what does it mean to resist? From viral content that defies the odds, to artists and activists who quietly tweak the system to stay visible, today we explore the subtle and strategic ways resistance unfolds in online spaces.
This final episode of the series cultivates a compelling discussion from a team of student researchers at the Centre for Governance and Human Rights. They are currently pursuing a project titled: ‘How are content creators employing everyday practices to resist and adapt to algorithmic governance?’
Rosie Freeman is a finalist reading Human, Social, and Political Sciences- specialising in Sociology. Eunbin Bang, an MPhil Politics and International Studies Candidate at Cambridge University, further holds an Honours in Political Science from McGill University. Muhammad Al Sohail, an MPhil graduate in Sociology of New Media and Culture from the University of Cambridge, holds research specialising in how digital environments shape both social structures and collective consciousness.
Website: https://www.cghr.polis.cam.ac.uk/research-themes/global-exp-alg-gov/ (https://www.cghr.polis.cam.ac.uk/research-themes/global-exp-alg-gov/)
Rosie Freeman - ref49@cam.ac.uk (mailto:ref49@cam.ac.uk)
Eunbin Bang- eb2012@cam.ac.uk (mailto:eb2012@cam.ac.uk)
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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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Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/33zeclUn2wMUIxRjsOApPW (https://open.spotify.com/show/33zeclUn2wMUIxRjsOApPW)
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/declarations-the-human-rights-podcast/id1178474117 (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/declarations-the-human-rights-podcast/id1178474117)
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Episode Credits
Host: Muhammad Ali
Producer: Muhammad Ali and Sarah Awan
Executive Producer: Sarah Awan
Show Notes: Yusan Ghebremeskel
Publisher and Communications Manager: Evie Nicholson
Editor: Max Parnell
30 Dec 2025
Justice in the Balance: Can the Law Save Democracy?
In this episode, we explore the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) — often hailed as the “conscience of Europe” and one of the most successful human rights institutions in the world. But in an era of democratic backsliding, populist politics, and eroding faith in institutions, what does “justice” look like today?
Drawing on eight years of fieldwork with advocates, lawyers, and judges at the ECHR, Professor Jessica Greenberg’s Justice in the Balance examines how the Court functions both as a bureaucratic machine and as a moral ideal. Through her ethnographic lens, she reveals the tensions between law’s promise and its practice — between the aspiration of human rights and the limits of the institutions meant to protect them.
This conversation probes the contradictions at the heart of the European project: Can legal institutions still serve as engines of democracy and hope, or have they become hollow symbols of a fading order?
About the Guest:
Jessica Greenberg is an associate professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Prior to coming to UIUC, Greenberg was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, and an Assistant Professor in Communication Studies at Northwestern University. She recently earned a Master of Studies in Law at the College of Law, University of Illinois. She is also currently the Co-Editor of the Political and Legal Anthropology Review (PoLAR).
Website: https://anthro.illinois.edu/directory/profile/jrgreenb
Email: jrgreenb@illinois.edu (mailto:jrgreenb@illinois.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 (https://open.spotify.com/show/33zeclUn2wMUIxRjsOApPW)
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/declarations-the-human-rights-podcast/id1178474117 (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
18 Dec 2025
The Sociology of Humanity: Benjamin P Davis and “Another Humanity”
What does it mean to imagine another humanity in a century marked by war, displacement, and deep inequality?
In this episode, we sit down with Benjamin P. Davis, author of Another Humanity: Decolonial Ethics from Du Bois to Arendt.
Davis traces shifting ideas of “the human” through the works of W. E. B. Du Bois, Édouard Glissant, Sylvia Wynter and Edward Said—thinkers who redefined human rights and humanism in the face of empire and exclusion.
Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s post-war correspondence with Karl Jaspers, Davis invites us to reflect on what a decolonial ethics of humanity might look like today.
Together, we ask: how might we live into Glissant’s question of whether we have the right, and the means, to imagine another dimension of humanity?
About the Guest
Benjamin Davis is a scholar of political theory, decolonial ethics, and the global histories of human rights. He previously held fellowships with the Department of African American Studies at Saint Louis University and the Centre for Ethics at the University of Toronto.
He is the author of three books. His first, Simone Weil’s Political Philosophy: Field Notes from the Margins, repositions the mystic Simone Weil as a major political thinker. His second book, Choose Your Bearing: Édouard Glissant, Human Rights and Decolonial Ethics, interprets poet and theorist Édouard Glissant as a vital voice for contemporary human rights practice. His most recent book, Another Humanity: Decolonial Ethics from Du Bois to Arendt, offers a defense of “the human” and “humanity” amid today’s critical theoretical debates.
Davis was awarded William A. Starr fellowship for innovative thinking in journalism.
Website: https://benjaminpdavis.com/
Email: benjamin.davis [at] tamu.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.
X: @DeclarationsPod
Instagram: @declarationspodcast
LinkedIn: Declarations: The Human Rights Podcast
Share your thoughts using #declarationspodcast
Email us at info@declarationspod.com
Episode Credits
Host: Bhumika Billa, Guest Panellist
Producer: Bhumika Billa and Shubham Jain
Executive Producer: Sarah Awan
Show Notes: Yusan Ghebremeskel
Publisher and Communications Manager: Evie Nicholson
Editor: Max Parnell
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Apple Podcasts (US)
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21 ratings
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