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

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!

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.

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.

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.]

On this episode, Laura Erber hosts a conversation with two distinguished historians from the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil: João José Reis and Fábio Baqueiro Figueiredo. These scholars represent two generations of researchers committed to reinterpreting and deepening our understanding of the complex relationships between Brazil and Africa.João José Reis is one of Brazil’s foremost historians and a globally recognized authority on 19th-century slavery. Born in Salvador, his extensive research has focused on urban slavery, resistance movements, and the lives of former slaves in Brazil. Reis earned his History degree from the Catholic University of Salvador and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota, where his groundbreaking thesis explored the Malê Revolt of 1835. A full professor at the Federal University of Bahia since 1979, he has also held visiting positions at Princeton and Harvard. Reis’ work has profoundly influenced the study of slavery and Afro-Brazilian history, making him a seminal figure in the field.Professor Fábio Baqueiro Figueiredo is a leading scholar in African History, also at the Federal University of Bahia. His research is deeply rooted in the cultural and political dynamics of contemporary Africa, with a particular focus on Angola. Figueiredo has delved into the intricate relationships between culture and politics and the formation and transformation of social and political identities in the latter half of the 20th century. Figueiredo has also made significant contributions to the academic community as editors of the journal Afro-Ásia from 2018 to 2023. Notably, João José Reis earlier helped relaunch that journal in 1996 after some years of irregular publication during the military dictatorship.Additionally, their work is closely tied to the Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientais (Centre for Afro-Oriental Studies), a pioneering research center at the Federal University of Bahia. Established in 1959, the Center is dedicated to the study of African, Asian, and Afro-Brazilian cultures, fostering a deeper understanding of the historical and contemporary ties between Brazil and the broader Afro-Oriental world.

This episode features a conversation about the debates and land disputes surrounding the development of airports in Asia and Africa. As airport construction projects proliferate across the Global South – often seen as a fast-track to development and modernization – new tensions frequently emerge, particularly when it comes to the huge tracts of land required for these new infrastructures. My guests today have a new edited volume on this topic, Contested Airport Land: Social-Spatial Transformation and Environmental Injustice in Asia and Africa, just published by Routledge. That book was co-edited by Irit Ittner, Sneha Sharma, Isaac Khambule, and Hanna Geschewski. Unfortunately, Isaac – a professor of political economy at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa – had an urgent matter arise just before recording, so he was unable to join the conversation. But the other three co-editors were able to proceed with a wonderful conversation. Irit Ittner works as a senior researcher in the Programme Environmental Governance at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability in Bonn. Her research interests include unplanned urbanization, land tenure, social navigation, and processes of transformation in coastal West African and European cities. Sneha Sharma works as a Project Officer at Fairtrade International in Bonn after having conducted research at the University of Bonn (2015–2022). She is also the author of Waste(d) Collectors: Politics of Urban Exclusion in India (2022). Hanna Geschewski is a doctoral researcher in Human Geography at the Chr. Michelsen Institute and the University of Bergen in Norway. Her current research explores the socio-environmental dimensions of prolonged displacement, with a particular focus on agriculture, cultivation, and rural livelihoods of Tibetan refugees in South India. In addition to the co-editors, the episode also features Rose Bridger, who wrote the foreword to the volume. Rose is co-founder of the Map of Airport-related Injustice and Resistance and the Global Anti-Aerotropolis Movement. She is also the author of the book Plane Truth (Pluto Press, 2013). As listeners may know, for the past year, we at IIAS were planning a symposium entitled Aspirational Infrastructure Research: Mobilities, Airports, Place (AIR-MAP), which took place in Seoul on October 24-25. That event explored the aspirations and imaginaries surrounding airport mega-developments across the Global South, which have been relatively less examined compared to similar infrastructures in the Global North. On this episode of The Channel, the four guests touch on many of these themes as they discuss their new book as well as the motivations, ambitions, challenges, and outcomes that massive airport development entails.