The Cambridge Student Podcasts

In this episode, Sophie Biancelli and Rosie Hillary are joined by Clare Chambers, Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, to discuss her book ‘Intact: A Defence of the Unmodified Body’. Clare makes the simple yet radical argument that our bodies should be allowed to be good enough just as they are. Sophie and Rosie ask Clare about a range of controversial issues, such as feminism’s complex relationship with the body, the political significance of plastic surgery, and whether individuals have the responsibility to resist the social pressure to modify their bodies.This episode was edited by Yasmin Herron-Isa.Works by Prof. Clare Chambers:‘Sex, Culture, and Justice: The Limits of Choice’ (2008)‘Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State’ (2017)‘Intact: A Defence of the Unmodified Body’ (2022)‘Freedom & Equality: Essays on Liberalism and Feminism’ (2024)Follow The Feminist Files on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/the_feminist_files_/Follow The Feminist Files on Substack:https://substack.com@thefeministfiles

Dans ce deuxième épisode avec Françoise Vergès, politologue, militante et autrice (Un Féminisme Décolonial, Making the World Clean, Une Théorie Féministe de la Violence), Astrid Carrasco et Lili-Rose Dupin s'intéressent aux projets pratiques et créatifs de celle-ci, ceux qui font germer des horizons utopiques, qui mettent en pratique les textes révolutionnaires et les appels à l'intersectionnalité. C'est un épisode touche à tout : décolonisation du musée, analyse du "care" écologique et décolonial, abolitionnisme carcéral, chorégraphies et pièces de théâtre populaire sont au menu ; autant de manières de construire des futurs meilleurs.Références : Paris Dance Project, Imagining the Post-Museum fellowship, "Objet Volé/Objet Pillé" théâtre populaire

Dans cet épisode, Astrid Carrasco et Lili-Rose Dupin proposent à Françoise Vergès, politologue, militante et l’autrice de Un Féminisme Décolonial, Making the World Clean, et Une Théorie Féministe de la Violence de revenir sur son travail de décolonisation du féminisme et de l’écologie. Comment appréhender et construire ensemble un féminisme véritablement décolonial ? L’écologie est-elle un outil colonial ? Comment s’en défaire ? La critique du capitalisme racial livrée par Françoise Vergès permet d’imaginer une réelle analyse et pratique du militantisme intersectionnel. Références : •⁠ ⁠Les ouvrages cités ci-dessus de Françoise Vergès ainsi que Le Ventre des Femmes •⁠ ⁠Les travaux de Hortense Spiller

In this episode, Siya Goyal and Juliana Lariios are joined by Maria Jose Rivadulla based at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá whose work sits at the intersection of urban studies, sociology and gender studies. She has published extensively on urban inequality, segregation, and most recently the city’s feminist care policy, the CIVICUS Care Blocks in Bogotá (Manzanas del Cuidado), which this episodes is focused on. Widely regarded as the world’s first care-oriented local policy, the Care Blocks emerged from decades of feminist organising in Colombia and a broader push to institutionalise care within the city’s District Care System (SIDICU). We trace the socio-historical context and civil network of street and state bureaucrats that made an explicitly feminist municipal policy possible under Mayor Claudia López in 2020, and examine how the initiative works to simultaneously recognise, reduce, and redistribute unpaid care work in localised contexts.But, can a city policy do what national welfare states have failed to? And how does national policy interact, or work against, local policy? We explore how far a policy can be radical and locally adapted, whilst also work within existing structures of governance and tight budgets. Maria’s work spans sociological work within local government, where her team’s research, particularly her 2024 article “Making the State Care”, examining the role of political brokerage, has contributed to the expansion and adjustment of the CIVICUS project itself. Looking to the future, we then discuss how cities and governments can draw from this model and the recipe for change that could be replicated in other developing contexts.Sources:Álvarez-Rivadulla, María José, Friederike Fleischer, and Adriana Hurtado-Tarazona. 2024. “Making the State Care: The Role of Political Willingness and Brokerage in Bogotá’s New Feminist Care Policy.” City 28 (5): 637–658. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2024.241246.Álvarez-Rivadulla, María José, Sebastián Orlando Espejo Fandiño, Friederike Fleischer, María José Gómez, Adriana Hurtado-Tarazona, Anyela Lizeth Moreno Palma, Vanesa Estefanía Ospina Ramírez, and Daniel Sanchez Vega. 2026. “Care Networks as Unanticipated Gains of Local Public Policy.” Nature Cities. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-025-00389-6. Alvarez et al 2026_Care Networks.pdfRazavi, Shahra. 2007. The Political and Social Economy of Care in a Development Context: Conceptual Issues, Research Questions and Policy Options. Gender and Development Programme Paper No. 3. Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD).Edited by Rowan BerkleyFollow The Feminist Files on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_feminist_files_/Follow The Feminist Files Substack: https://substack.com/@thefeministfiles

Host Faith Cunningham is joined by Kim Alexander, a PhD student in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Jesus College, Cambridge. They dig into her thesis and discuss the rhetoric of choice, of ‘perfect use’, and how efficacy percentages for contraceptives are communicated. Together they trace the history of contraceptive technology and how it's been conveyed to users, showing why that history still matters for the practical decisions people make about birth control today. Get in touch to hear more about her work: ka460@cam.ac.ukOrganisations & ReportsBritish Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), Long-Acting Reversible Contraception in the UK. Produced in collaboration with the Reproduction Justice Initiative (formerly Decolonising Contraception), the Division of Health Research at Lancaster University, and Shine Aloud UK. BPAS, c. 2024. PDF report on access to long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) and recommendations for improving provision in the UK. https://www.bpas.org/media/g0dfk0ny/larc-report-final-laid-up.pdfReproduction Justice Initiative (formerly Decolonising Contraception). Founded September 2018. Campaigning organisation promoting equitable access to contraception and reproductive healthcareWomen on Waves. Founded 1999, Netherlands. International advocacy organisation providing information on medical abortion, telemedicine abortion care, and campaigns for abortion pill access and legal reform. https://www.womenonwaves.orgBooks MentionedMarie Carmichael Stopes. Contraception (Birth Control): Its Theory, History and Practice: A Manual for the Medical and Legal Professions. London: John Bale, Sons & Danielsson, 1923 (expanded 2nd ed. 1927).Norman E. Himes. Medical History of Contraception. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1936.Nelly Oudshoorn. Beyond the Natural Body: An Archaeology of Sex Hormones. London: Routledge, 1994.Linda Gordon. The Moral Property of Women: A History of Birth Control Politics in America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002 (revised and expanded edition of Woman's Body, Woman's Right (1976)).David Edgerton. The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900. London: Profile Books, 2006.Follow The Feminist Files on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_feminist_files_/Follow The Feminist Files on Substack: https://substack.com@thefeministfilesEpisode edited by

In this episode, Asha Metcalfe and Sophie Biancelli are joined by Dr Isabelle Higgins, a sociologist at the University of Cambridge, to discuss how online culture reflects and perpetuates systems of power and inequality. We explore how epistemic and affective structures influence aesthetics, visibility and representation.Drawing on Stuart Hall’s theory of regimes of representation, and conjunctural analysis, we explore how visibility online today is mediated by histories of inequality. How do online representations of adopted children of colour today reflect colonial legacies? How does generative AI reinforce systems of oppression? Does the rise of Sabrina Carpenter and Addison Rae suggest we live in a post-feminist world? Isabelle demonstrates how sociological theory can be used to explore these questions and examine what online cultural products, from adoption websites to music videos, reveal about our society. To clarify, the point on Bourdieu and Wacquant's three types of reflexivity refers to:1) social origins and coordinates of the individual research, 2) the academic field – ‘the objective space of possible intellectual positions offered to him or her’, 3) the ‘intellectualist bias which invites us to consider the world as a spectacle’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992:39)Isabelle Higgins' Work:Early research into adoption and the internet - Higgins, I. (2024). Classified children: A critical analysis of the digital interfaces and representations that mediate adoption in the United States. New Media & Society, 26(11), 6597-6614.Reflection on archival research - Higgins, I. (2025) ‘Complex Connections: Coloniality, embodiment and children of colour in the archives’ Decolonizing Bodies, Eds. Carolyn Ureña & Saiba Varma; Bloomsbury Academic Press.Co-authored writing on AI with colleagues at the department of Sociology - Baert, P., Dorschel, R., Hall, M., Higgins, I., McPherson, E., & Philip, S. (2026). Dialogues Towards Sociologies of Generative AI. Social Science Computer Review, 44(1), 59-79.People and concepts mentioned:Other sources mentioned:Stuart Hall on Conjunctural Analysis - link to talk here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHpht1nNtB0&t=1s and transcript here https://www.mediaed.org/transcripts/Stuart-Hall-Through-the-Prism-of-an-Intellectual-Life-Transcript.pdfLaura Briggs on adoption imagery - Briggs, L. (2003). Mother, child, race, nation: The visual iconography of rescue and the politics of transnational and transracial adoption. Gender & History, 15(2), 179-200.Julian Go - the beginning of sociology as a discipline - Go, J. 2013. ‘The Emergence of American Sociology in the Context of Empire’. In Sociology & Empire: The Imperial Entanglements of a Discipline, edited by George Steinmetz, 83–103. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Bourdieu/Waquant - social coordinates of a researcher - Wacquant, L. J., & Bourdieu, P. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology University of Chicago Press.Linda Tuhiwai Smith - “Get the story right and tell the story well”  - Smith, L. T. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples (2nd ed.). Zed Books Sara Ahmed - ‘histories that stick’ - Ahmed, S. (2004). Collective feelings: Or, the impressions left by others. Theory, culture & society, 21(2), 25-42.Gustavo H. Dalaqua - Aesthetic injusticeKanai and Gill - Kanai, A., & Gill, R. (2020). Woke? Affect, neoliberalism, marginalised identities and consumer culture. New Formations, 102(102), 10-27.Francesca Sobande on CGI influencers - Sobande, F. (2021). Spectacularized and Branded Digital (Re)presentations of Black People and Blackness. Television & New Media, 22(2), 131-146.Angela McRobbie - Postfeminism - McRobbie, A. (2004). Post‐feminism and popular culture. Feminist media studies, 4(3), 255-264.Briony Hannell - fandom - Hannell, Briony. 2023. Feminist Fandom: Media Fandom, Digital Feminisms, and Tumblr. Bloomsbury.