The Channel: A Podcast from the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS)

Cannabis and Colonialism with Utathya Chattopadhyaya 21.07.2026 40min

This episode features an interview about the social history of cannabis in colonial South Asia. Utathya Chattopadhyaya is Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and coeditor of the journal The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs. Utathya's new book is Ganja Matters: Empire and the Pursuits of Cannabis in British India, which was recently published by the University of California Press. Presenting a sweeping social history of ganja in colonial India, the book examines the collision between different ways of viewing, using, and valuing cannabis products – namely, those of local religious, cultural, and political groups on the on the one hand and those of colonial administrators on the other. Through a multi-species analysis, the book uses ganja to explore broader themes of taxation, governance, transgression, and social identity. The book is available as an Open Access title here: https://www.luminosoa.org/books/m/10.1525/luminos.276 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sounds of the Matua with Carola Lorea 25.06.2026 41min

This episode features a conversation about the Matua community with Carola E. Lorea, Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Tübingen. Lorea is interested in gender, oral traditions, and popular religious movements in South Asia, and she leads the ERC-funded project MANTRAMS: Mantras in Religion, Media, and Society in Global Southern Asia. Lorea is the author of Folklore, Religion and the Songs of a Bengali Madman (Brill, 2016), and with Rosalind Hackett, she also co-edited the volume Religious Sounds Beyond the Global North: Senses, Media and Power (2024, IIAS “Global Asia” series). Her latest book is Communities of Sound: Religion, Displacement, and Caste in the Bay of Bengal, published this year by Wesleyan University Press. Through an ethnographic approach that is both multimodal and multi-sited, the book explores how sound and performance shape the large community of Matua devotees across time and space. In this conversation, Carola discusses the centrality of music, performance, poetry, and storytelling within the history and contemporary religious lives of the Matua community across the Bay of Bengal. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Public Diplomacy and Casa Asia 28.05.2026 46min

This episode features a recording from a recent event hosted at the International Institute for Asian Studies. On May 18, José Pintor Aguilar gave a talk about the importance of public diplomacy and collaborative knowledge exchange, drawing especially on his work as the Director General of Casa Asia in Barcelona. The Casas’ network represents an innovative approach that the Spanish government has undertaken to build bridges between multiple constituencies and sectors across scales. The audio was recorded live here at Leiden University. After opening and introductory remarks from Philippe Peycam and Laura Erber of IIAS, José Pintor discusses the Casas model of fostering active trust and long-term partnerships in Asia-Europe relations. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dreaming of Words with Nandan 28.04.2026 33min

This episode features a conversation with Nandan, a filmmaker and writer from Keralam, India. After training and working as a civil engineer, Nandan moved to Mumbai to pursue his passion for filmmaking. As an author, he has published four books: The Dream Balloon, Manam, New Desertlands, and Click, and he has also contributed to several comic anthologies. Nandan’s films, including Breath and Dreaming of Words, have been screened at festivals and academic conferences around the world. Our discussion mostly focuses on the latter, Dreaming of Worlds, which explores the life and work of Njattyela Sreedharan, an elementary school drop-out who embarked on a 25-year quest to compile a dictionary connecting four major Dravidian languages. The documentary earned Nandan the National Film Award as both director and producer. Listeners can watch the film with English subtitles for free on YouTube. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Indian Ocean Worlds with Tom Hoogervorst, Mahmood Kooria, Ariel C. Lopez, and Aireen Grace Andal 26.03.2026 37min

This episode features a conversation with four colleagues involved in the International Consortium for Indian Ocean Studies (ICIOS). Mahmood Kooria is Lecturer in the History of the Indian Ocean World at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests are in the premodern Indian Ocean world, global history of law, Islamic cultures, matrilineal-matriarchal communities, Afro-Asian connections, and manuscript traditions. He is the author of the book Islamic Law in Circulation, published by Cambridge University Press in 2024. Tom Hoogervorst is a professor at KITLV. His research explores human connections and cultural contact through food and language. His doctoral work traced Southeast Asian influence on the early Indian Ocean world through loanwords and linguistic borrowing. His most recent book is Language Ungoverned: Indonesia's Chinese Print Entrepreneurs, 1911–1949, published in 2021 by Cornell University Press. In 2024, he launched a project on the culinary influence of early communities with roots in the Indonesian archipelago in Sri Lanka, South Africa, and Suriname. Ariel C. Lopez is Associate Professor and Assistant to the Dean for Research, Publications, and Information at the Asian Center, University of the Philippines, Diliman. His areas of interest include Indonesian Studies, Colonial and Maritime History, Philippine History and Southeast Asian History. He is the author of the book Philippine Confluence: Iberian, Chinese and Islamic Currents, C. 1500-1800, published by Leiden University Press in 2020. Finally, Aireen Grace Andal is a researcher at the Airlangga Institute for Indian Ocean Crossroads, Airlangga University, and she is currently a Research Fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies. She is a cultural geographer whose work focuses especially on children’s experiences of – and engagements with – cities, and she also researches island geographies and peripheral urban transformations. The primary focus of discussion is the newly relaunched International Consortium for Indian Ocean Studies, which builds upon earlier initiatives started in Leiden nearly a decade ago. In introducing the new consortium, the guests also discuss the importance of collaborative, multi-centered, and multi-vocal approaches to research, and they reflect on how an Indian Ocean perspective can disrupt and unsettle the traditional cartographies inherited from earlier area studies divisions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Soundscapes of Dutch-Japanese Waterworks with Arjan Rietveld 26.02.2026 30min

This episode features a conversation with Arjan Rietveld, a writer and curator in the world of electronic music. Arjan is the founder of Field Records, which has released a string of experimental and artistically driven albums since the label was launched in 2008. In this discussion, Arjan introduces Waterworks, a multimedia project he spearheaded which catalogues the centuries-long history of Dutch hydraulic engineers working on water management in Japan. That catalogue primarily takes the form of an interactive map detailing over 50 projects across Japan during the Meiji Era. In addition to the map, the Waterworks project yielded a trilogy of albums exploring this history through a mixture of ambient music, environmental recordings, and experimental audio production. Listeners will hear selected excerpts in this episode, but all of the recordings, the interactive map, and more historical details are available on the project website: https://waterworksproject.nl/en.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Belt and Road Initiative around the World with Jewellord T. Nem Singh, Linda Tjia Yin-nor, Angela Tritto, and Guanie Lim 29.01.2026 1h 11min

This episode features a discussion on current research into China's Belt and Road initiative, particularly as it relates to the Global South. Jewellord T. Nem Singh is a Principal Research Fellow in Global Political Economy at the School of Global Studies, University of Sussex. He is the author of Business of the State: Why State Ownership Matters for Resource Governance (Oxford University Press, 2024). Linda Tjia Yin-nor is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public and International Affairs at City University of Hong Kong. Her research interests focus on China's domestic railway and logistics development, as well as the political economy of China's overseas foreign aid and industrial projects in Central and Southeast Asia. She is the author of the book Explaining China’s Railway Reform: A Train of Property Rights Re-arrangements, published by Routledge in 2015. Angela Tritto is an Honorary Fellow at the University College of London, European & International Social & Political Studies Centre. She was formerly with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where her research focused on examining China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Southeast Asia and beyond. Her publications analyze the role of public, private, and third-sector organizations in affecting development outcomes and sustainability. Finally, Guanie Lim is Assistant Professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), Japan. His main research interests are comparative political economy, value chain analysis, and the Belt and Road Initiative in Southeast Asia. Guanie is also interested in broader development issues within Asia, especially those of China, Vietnam, and Malaysia.  Along with several other colleagues, these four guests recently produced a special issue of the journal Competition & Change, entitled “China’s Quest for Soft Power and the Rebirth of National Strategies in the Belt and Road Initiative.” The issue explores the current state of the BRI, resisting master narratives of the policy to show the diverse, complicated, contextual ways host states strategically engage with China's global influence. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A Maldivian Supper (Guest Episode: The Migration Menu) 18.12.2025 31min

This episode comes from our friends over at The Migration Menu, a podcast co-hosted by James Staples and Luke Heslop, both based at Brunel University London. As anthropologists with research interests in South Asia, James and Luke created The Migration Menu podcast series to highlight the interrelations of food, global migration, and identity, specifically as related to South Asian communities in the UK. In each episode, the co-hosts talk to restaurant owners, chefs, and others to explore diverse culinary traditions in and around London, using food as an entry point into wider discussions of history, culture, and politics. In this episode, originally titled “Measure with the Heart,” James and Luke sample food from the Maldivian Supper Club run by Mie Ali Didi. Even within Asian Studies, The Maldives archipelago tends to receive far less attention than larger South Asian nations, and we thought listeners would like to hear this episode of The Migration Menu, which is presented here in full. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Promise of Cultural Geography with Ben Anderson and Vickie Zhang 27.11.2025 1h 13min

This episode features a conversation with two cultural geographers, Ben Anderson and Vickie Zhang, in which they discuss a collaborative project they spearheaded and recently released, one that provokes their discipline and also embodies an alternative mode of academic thinking and publishing. In late 2024, Ben and Vickie circulated an unconventional announcement welcoming very short reflections answering the prompt, “What, for you, is the promise of cultural geography?” A year later, they have collected the diverse responses in an exciting book, The Promise of Cultural Geography, which is now available in a print edition as well as for free online. Ben Anderson is a Professor in the Department of Geography at Durham University. His research explores affect and nonrepresentational theories, particularly in relation to contemporary politics and everyday life. In addition to many articles and chapters, he is the author of the book Encountering Affect: Capacities, Apparatuses, Conditions, published in 2014 by Routledge, and with Anna Secor, co-author (with Anna Secor) of The Politics of Feeling: Populism, Progressivism, and Liberalism, published in 2025 by Goldsmith's Press.   Vickie Zhang is a Lecturer in the School of Geographical Sciences at Bristol University. Also exploring conceptual terrain of affect, embodiment, and subjectivity, her research examines the experience of economic transformation, especially among industrial and migrant workers in China and Australia.   In this episode, Vickie and Ben discuss the impetus behind “The Promise of Cultural Geography” project, how the final book came together, and the importance of asking big questions of our disciplines.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Casino Capitalism in Macau with Tim Simpson 30.10.2025 1h 12min

This episode features an interview with Timothy Simpson, Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Macau. Tim's interdisciplinary research focuses on Macau's urban culture, architecture, and tourism industry, tracing the city's history from a colonial Portuguese territory into one of the world's most renowned and lucrative sites of casino gaming. His most recent book is Betting on Macau: Casino Capitalism and China’s Consumer Revolution, which was published in 2023 by the University of Minnesota Press as part of their “Globalization and Community” series. The book examines the function of Macau's gambling and consumer economy within the broader post-socialist transformation in China. This year, Tim is also a Research Fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies, where he is working on a new project analyzing contemporary efforts to diversify Macau's tourism industry. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Crossing Musical Boundaries with the ADAM Quartet and Vinthya Perinpanathan 25.09.2025 50min

This episode features a conversation with Vinthya Perinpanathan and members of the ADAM Quartet about musical exchange and artistic collaboration across genres and histories. The ADAM Quartet is a young string quartet consisting of Minna Svedberg (viola), Margot Kolodziej (violin), Julia Kleinsmann (violin), and Renée Timmer (cello). The group formed in Amsterdam and has performed at major venues and festivals in The Netherlands. Besides playing the traditional string quartet repertoire, ADAM regularly collaborates with contemporary composers working in other musical styles and disciplines. One such composer is this episode's fifth guest, Vinthya Perinpanathan. Trained in Western-Classical music, Vinthya has begun exploring Sri Lankan and South Asian music in her compositions as well. This month, ADAM releases its debut album called Exquisite Corpse, and in January, the string quartet will play a new piece composed by Perinpanathan. In their conversation, and through several audio examples, the ADAM Quartet and Vinthya discuss new music collaborations as well as the importance and challenges of combining different musical traditions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Beijing Sound Art Museum with Colin Chinnery 28.08.2025 1h 16min

This episode features a conversation on Beijing's urban soundscape with Colin Chinnery, an artist and curator based in China. Chinnery is a co-founder of Sound Art Museum in Beijing. This museum opened to the public in 2023, and it offers visitors a history of the city through sounds. Sound Art Museum is an immersive space, which also features natural soundscapes, languages, and music from around the world. In today’s episode, Colin discusses the importance of sound for knowing and understanding a city, while listening to different examples of recordings from old and new Beijing. Colin talks about his journey to create this 6000-square-meter space, his plans for the museum, and the value and significance of careful listening.  The recording of Xin Fengxia singing "Liu Qiao’er" comes courtesy of the Chinese Database for Traditional Music. The song "On a Mound" by the band Xue Wei was provided by Colin Chinnery. All other audio clips and field recordings included in this episode are courtesy of Sound Art Museum. In addition to a short excerpt included in the conversation, the episode concludes with the full song《都塔尔弹唱》being performed on the dutar by Abdulla Majnun. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Division of Vietnam (Guest Episode: Nam Phong Dialogues) 24.07.2025 55min

On this episode of The Channel, we’re featuring a full episode from our friends over at the Nam Phong Dialogues podcast. Nam Phong Dialogues is hosted by two Vietnamese American scholars, and the show excels at presenting Vietnamese intellectual and sociopolitical history in ways that are accessible, engaging, and relevant for understanding contemporary global issues. The two co-hosts are Kevin Pham and Yen Vu. Kevin Pham is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. His first book, The Architects of Dignity: Vietnamese Visions of Decolonization, was published last year by Oxford University Press. Yen Vu is a Faculty Member in Literature at Fulbright University Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City, and she is currently a Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Amsterdam during Summer 2025. In this episode of Nam Phong Dialogues, Yen and Kevin discuss the historical division of Vietnam following the end of the French colonial period, including the massive migrations that it spurred. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

South Asian Games with Jacob Schmidt-Madsen 26.06.2025 1h 1min

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Indigo Across Borders with Aarti Kawlra, Jody Benjamin, Min-Chin Chiang, and Jocelyne Vokouma 29.05.2025 1h 20min

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Curating the Africa-Asia ConFest with Laura Erber, Fatima Bintou Rassoul Sy, Chương-Đài Võ, and Fábio Baqueiro Figueiredo 28.05.2025 1h 39min

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Architectural Encounters in the Asia Pacific with Zhengfeng Wang, Amanda Achmadi, Paul Walker, and Soon-Tzu Speechley 24.04.2025 1h 3min

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chiang Mai between Empire and Modern Thailand (Guest Episode: Southeast Asia Crossroads) 27.03.2025 53min

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! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bangladeshi Masculinities with Mustahid Husain 26.02.2025 45min

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Islam and Politics in Indonesia with Verena Meyer, Zainal Abidin, Saskia Schäfer, and Taufiq Hanafi 30.01.2025 36min

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.