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

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.