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10. New Currents at the Nieuwe Instituut with Setareh Noorani, Priya Swamy, Sarojini Lewis, and Lou Mo
38:16||Season 5, Ep. 10This episode features a conversation about the "New Currents Symposium," a special event at the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam on October 29, 2026. Emerging out of the ongoing project New Currents: Indian Ocean Futures, the upcoming event has been designed to explore the shared histories and futures of the Indian Ocean region through panel discussions, film screenings, and artworks. The four guests are all involved in the forthcoming symposium as organizers, artists, curators, or presenters. Setareh Noorani is an architect, curator, and researcher at Het Nieuwe Instituut; Priya Swami is Curator of Globalisation and South Asia at the Wereldmuseum; Sarojini Lewis and Lou Mo are artists who have both contributed to the New Currents project (here and here), and they will also join the "Ports As Portals" panel discussed in this episode.The symposium is a public event, and listeners are strongly encouraged to attend. Tickets are available here: https://www.eventbrite.nl/e/new-currents-symposium-tickets-1995656973730?aff=oddtdtcreatorThe audio clip at the end of the episode, in lieu of the usual outro music, was provided by Lou Mo. Credit: Bitter Sounds: A Potential Rehearsal - Arthur Yuen Po Hang, Mohamed Gueye and Xuandi Zhang. Bitter Sounds is a series of Afro-Asian musical experiments initiated by Musquiqui Chihying and Lou Mo.
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9. Coastal Entanglements in Northeast Japan with Andrew Littlejohn
58:27||Season 5, Ep. 9This episode features a conversation with Andrew Littlejohn, assistant professor at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology of Leiden University. He specializes in environmental anthropology and political ecology, with a particular focus on Japan. Littlejohn currently heads the project “Climate Citizenship: Infrastructures, Environments, and Democracy in the Era of Climate Change,” for which he received a Starting Grant from the European Research Council. In this episode, Littlejohn mostly discusses his new book, We Live with the Sea: Ecologizing Safety in Post-Tsunami Japan, published this past July by Duke University Press. Beginning with the massive earthquake and tsunami that occurred in East Japan in March 2011, the book examines the contestations over recovery and the varied proposals designed to mitigate and prevent future disasters.The audio composition discussed and excerpted at the end of the episode is called "Shizugawa." Listeners can read about the piece and listen to more of the audio here: https://www.gruenrekorder.de/?page_id=186218. Memories of Timor with Rita Padawangi
45:43||Season 5, Ep. 8This episode features an interview with Rita Padawangi, a sociologist and Associate Professor at Singapore University of Social Sciences. Her work explores the politics of urban placemaking and city development, particularly in Southeast Asia, and she's been very involved with several key IIAS programs over the years, especially as co-coordinator of the Southeast Asia Neighborhoods Network, funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. This episode features a conversation about the recent documentary Ingatan dari Timor or Memories of Timor. The film was produced by Rita and directed by Ari Trismana, and it was released by the documentary production house WatchDoc. Memories of Timor explores the violent history of Timor Leste, which is often omitted from Indonesian textbooks and concealed from Indonesian students. Listeners can watch the film with English subtitles for free on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydfbHFPnzuc7. Cannabis and Colonialism with Utathya Chattopadhyaya
40:31||Season 5, Ep. 7This 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.2766. Sounds of the Matua with Carola Lorea
41:54||Season 5, Ep. 6This 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.5. Public Diplomacy and Casa Asia
46:50||Season 5, Ep. 5This 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.4. Dreaming of Words with Nandan
33:32||Season 5, Ep. 4This 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.