Episodios

  • South Asian Games with Jacob Schmidt-Madsen

    South Asian Games with Jacob Schmidt-Madsen
    Jun 26 2025
    This episode features a discussion with Jacob Schmidt-Madsen about Game Studies and the history of South Asian board games. Jacob is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. He earned his PhD in Indology in 2019 from the University of Copenhagen, where he still remains an Affiliated External Researcher. His work focuses on the history, structure, and cultural significance of board games in South Asia, and his dissertation explored the Indian origins of the modern children’s game “Snakes and Ladders.” In Berlin, he is continuing this work as part of the research group Astral Sciences in Trans-Regional Asia (ASTRA), headed by Anuj Misra. His project within that group explores the cosmological and astrological dimensions to play and games in South Asia, specifically through the examination and translation of three encyclopedic texts. In the following discussion, we chat about the ideological and cultural significance of games, exploring the importance of play both as a key domain of experience and as an object of academic study.

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    1 h y 1 m
  • Indigo Across Borders with Aarti Kawlra, Jody Benjamin, Min-Chin Chiang, and Jocelyne Vokouma

    Indigo Across Borders with Aarti Kawlra, Jody Benjamin, Min-Chin Chiang, and Jocelyne Vokouma
    May 29 2025

    This episode features Aarti Kawlra, Academic Director of the Humanities Across Borders program at IIAS, hosting discussion about indigo with three colleagues, scholars, and educators. Jody Benjamin is an Associate Professor of History at Howard University. His recent book is The Texture of Change: Dress, Self-Fashioning and History in Western Africa, 1700-1850 (Ohio University Press, New African History Series, 2024), which explores questions of state-making, social hierarchy, and self-making across parts of Mali, Senegal, and Guinea through the lens of textiles and dress in a context shaped by an emergent global capitalism, slavery, and colonialism. Min-Chin Chiang is an Associate Professor and the Chairperson of the Graduate Institute of Architecture and Cultural Heritage in Taipei National University of the Arts. Her work focuses on heritage craft, heritage education, and heritage dynamics in relation to community and colonialism. Finally, Jocelyne Vokouma is a researcher in the Department of Socioeconomics and Development Anthropology at the Institute of Social Studies (Institut des Sciences des Sociétés / INSS-CNRST) in Burkina Faso, where she specializes in the aesthetics of indigo in clothing.


    Indigo occupies a haloed place as a color, a craft, and a hi(story) of global interactions. Viewed largely as a dye-yielding plant with a specific chemistry and exchange value as a commodity, in this podcast, the guests focus on indigo as a tool for African and Asian self-consciousness. Brought to you ahead of the Africa-Asia ConFest to be held next month (June 2025) in Dakar, this episode centers on indigo as a livelihood practice and techno-cultural knowhow, taking two specific examples, namely, indigo in Taiwan and indigo in Burkina Faso.

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    1 h y 21 m
  • Curating the Africa-Asia ConFest with Laura Erber, Fatima Bintou Rassoul Sy, Chương-Đài Võ, and Fábio Baqueiro Figueiredo

    Curating the Africa-Asia ConFest with Laura Erber, Fatima Bintou Rassoul Sy, Chương-Đài Võ, and Fábio Baqueiro Figueiredo
    May 28 2025
    This episode of the podcast is a special discussion connected to our upcoming event, Africa–Asia: A New Axis of Knowledge, which will take place in Dakar from June 11-14. Because not everyone will be able to join us in person, we thought it would be meaningful to bring you some of the conversations and ideas that have inspired this third edition of the event – previously held in Ghana (2015) and Tanzania (2018). In anticipation of the event, Laura Erber speaks with three guests about the Conference-Festival model and some of the key themes and ideas that inspire it. In different ways, each of the three guests approach their work in a way that embodies the transregional and culturally engaged dimensions of the event. First, Fatima Bintou Rassoul Sy is Director of Programs at RAW Material Company in Dakar. Second, Chương-Đài Võ is an independent curator and professor at the École Supérieure d’Art in Paris-Cergy, and she is also the lead curator of the ConFest artistic program. Finally, Fabio Baqueiro Figueiredo is an historian and professor at the Federal University of Bahia in Salvador, Brazil. Together, they have an interdisciplinary conversation about festivals, conferences, and cultural events rooted in the Global South – especially those inspired by the idea of non-alignment. We’ll look at historical milestones like the 1955 Bandung Conference and FESTAC 77, as well as more recent initiatives, to reflect on how such gatherings create space for cultural, political, and social expression outside dominant power structures – and what kind of genuine alternatives they might offer today in different contexts.

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    1 h y 39 m
  • Architectural Encounters in the Asia Pacific with Zhengfeng Wang, Amanda Achmadi, Paul Walker, and Soon-Tzu Speechley

    Architectural Encounters in the Asia Pacific with Zhengfeng Wang, Amanda Achmadi, Paul Walker, and Soon-Tzu Speechley
    Apr 24 2025

    In this episode, current IIAS Research Fellow Zhengfeng Wang hosts a conversation on transregional architectural history in the Asia-Pacific. She is joined by Amanda Achmadi, Paul Walker, and Soon-Tzu Speechley, all from the University of Melbourne. The three guests recently co-edited the volume Architectural Encounters in Asia Pacific: Built Traces of Intercolonial Trade, Industry and Labour, 1800s-1950s, published by Bloomsbury in 2024).


    Amanda Achmadi is an Associate Professor in Architectural Design, specializing in Asian Architecture and Urbanism. Her work examines the intersections of architecture and identity politics across pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial periods, with a particular focus on Indonesia and the broader Southeast Asian region. Amanda was previously a Research Fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies in 2010. Paul Walker is a Professor of Architecture whose recent research delves into mid-20th-century architecture in Australia and New Zealand, contemporary museum architecture, and colonial museum buildings in Australia, New Zealand, and India. Finally, Soon-Tzu Speechley is a Lecturer in Urban and Cultural Heritage. His research interests include the reception of classical architecture in colonial Malaya, architectural networks within the British Empire, and Southeast Asian heritage.

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    1 h y 4 m
  • Chiang Mai between Empire and Modern Thailand (Guest Episode: Southeast Asia Crossroads)

    Chiang Mai between Empire and Modern Thailand (Guest Episode: Southeast Asia Crossroads)
    Mar 27 2025
    On this episode of The Channel, we’re bringing you a full episode from our friends over at Southeast Asia Crossroads, a podcast from the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University. We at IIAS have frequently crossed paths with members of the team behind Southeast Asia Crossroads, and we’ve long wanted to do re-post one of their episodes on our feed. A perfect opportunity arose when an episode from last September featured Taylor Easum for a group discussion of his latest book, Chiang Mai between Empire and Modern Thailand: A City in the Colonial Margins. Easum is an Associate Professor of History at Indiana State University, and as some of you may know, the book under discussion is part of our “Asian Cities” book series, published by IIAS and Amsterdam University Press. As you’ll hear, the podcast features rigorous, engaging, but also fun discussions on a wide array of topics pertaining to the Southeast Asia, so we encourage our listeners to go and subscribe to Southeast Asia Crossroads!

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    54 m
  • Bangladeshi Masculinities with Mustahid Husain

    Bangladeshi Masculinities with Mustahid Husain
    Feb 26 2025
    This episode features a conversation with Mustahid Husain, who is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. His work explores a variety of themes, from international development and global inequality to mental health and the Bangladeshi diaspora. He is the author of two new books. The first is a short academic monograph, Masculinity and Mental Health of Muslim Men of Colour: Diaspora and Intersectionality of Canadian Youth, published in 2024 as part of Palgrave’s New Directions in Islam series. The book explores the complex intersection of mental health, masculinity, and cultural identity among young Bangldeshi-Canadian men. His second new book is the novel Double Truths, which follows the protagonist Asif as he navigates personal relationships and his own identity in the complicated world of international development agencies. In this conversation, Mustahid discusses both of these projects as well as the somewhat unconventional path that led him to pursue anthropology.

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    46 m
  • Islam and Politics in Indonesia with Verena Meyer, Zainal Abidin, Saskia Schäfer, and Taufiq Hanafi

    Islam and Politics in Indonesia with Verena Meyer, Zainal Abidin, Saskia Schäfer, and Taufiq Hanafi
    Jan 30 2025

    This episode features a conversation about contemporary Indonesian politics, with a special focus on the role of Islam. In October 2024, Prabowo Subianto was sworn in as the president of Indonesia. In the Presidential election back in February 2024, he had quite handily defeated his two competitors, Anies Baswedan and Ganjar Pranowo, with 59% of the popular vote. This 2024 election was the third time that Prabowo tried to become president, after he lost in 2014 and 2019 against Joko "Jokowi" Widodo. The political competitions between Jokowi and Prabowo on occasion turned quite ugly. Not infrequently, it was accusations that the other was the "wrong kind" of Muslim that made it ugly – with the effect that the two candidates always appeared like irreconcilable opponents. But when Jokowi could no longer compete in the 2024 elections after his second term was up, he surprised many spectators by endorsing none other than Prabowo as his successor as president. Prabowo, in turn, selected Jokowi’s son, Gibran Rakabuming, as his running mate.


    This episode is hosted by Dr. Verena Meyer, an Assistant Professor of Islam in South and Southeast Asia at Leiden University. She is joined by three colleagues with expertise in Islam and politics in contemporary Indonesia: (1) Dr. Zainal Abidin, who teaches at at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta and also serves as Director of the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies; (2) Dr. Saskia Schäfer, Head of a Research Group about Secularity, Islam, and Democracy in Indonesia and Turkey at Humboldt University in Berlin; and (3) Dr. Taufiq Hanafi, postdoctoral researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) in Leiden. Welcome to the three of you, and thank you for joining us.

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    37 m
  • Asian Bronze at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam with Anna Slaczka, Ching-Ling Wang, William Southworth, and Sara Creange

    Asian Bronze at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam with Anna Slaczka, Ching-Ling Wang, William Southworth, and Sara Creange
    Dec 19 2024

    This episode features a conversation with the team behind the exhibition Asian Bronze at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. The ambitious show celebrates 4000 years of bronze art and the central role of bronze in the traditions of Asia. Ranging from prehistoric objects to contemporary artworks, the exhibition includes pieces from India, China, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan, Nepal, and Korea. In this conversation, our four guests elaborate on the magnificence of this metal and its importance across widely different regions of the Asian continent. They discuss the complexities of planning and designing an exhibition of this scale and proportion, and they introduce some of their favorite objects and stories. William Southworth is Curator of Southeast Asian Art at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Ching-Ling Wang is Curator of East Asian Art at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Anna Slaczka is Curator of South Asian Art at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, and Sara Creange is Conservator Metals at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.


    Asian Bronze is on view at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam until 12 January 2025. It includes a book entitled Asian Bronze. 4000 Years of Beauty, as well as a symposium that will be held on 9 and 10 January 2025. Interested listeners can register for the symposium using the following link: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/whats-on/lectures-symposiums/symposium-asian-bronze


    [The recording of bronze bells, a clip of which is played in this episode, was kindly provided by the Museum of East Asian Art, Koeln & Ludwig Foundation, Aachen.]

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    52 m