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

Sounds of the Matua with Carola Lorea

This episode features a conversation about the Matua community with Carola E. Lorea [https://uni-tuebingen.de/fakultaeten/philosophische-fakultaet/fachbereiche/altertums-und-kunstwissenschaften/institut-fuer-religionswissenschaft/institut/personen/prof-carola-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 [https://mantrams.univie.ac.at/]. Lorea is the author of Folklore, Religion and the Songs of a Bengali Madman [https://brill.com/display/title/33645] (Brill, 2016), and with Rosalind Hackett, she also co-edited the volume Religious Sounds Beyond the Global North: Senses, Media and Power [https://www.routledge.com/Religious-Sounds-Beyond-the-Global-North-Senses-Media-and-Power/Lorea-Hackett/p/book/9781041185215] (2024, IIAS “Global Asia” series). Her latest book is Communities of Sound: Religion, Displacement, and Caste in the Bay of Bengal [https://www.weslpress.org/9780819502247/communities-of-sound/], 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 [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Public Diplomacy and Casa Asia

This episode features a recording from a recent event [https://www.iias.asia/events/casas-network-innovative-public-diplomacy-instrument] 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 [https://www.casaasia.eu/] 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 [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Dreaming of Words with Nandan

This episode features a conversation with Nandan [https://nandan.in/], 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 [https://nandan.in/films/breath/] and Dreaming of Words [https://nandan.in/films/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 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWmRnOcm_Ko&feature=youtu.be]. ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

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

This episode features a conversation with four colleagues involved in the International Consortium for Indian Ocean Studies (ICIOS) [https://indianoceanstudies.webnode.page]. Mahmood Kooria [https://edwebprofiles.ed.ac.uk/profile/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 [https://www.cambridge.org/gb/universitypress/subjects/history/middle-east-history/islamic-law-circulation-shafii-texts-across-indian-ocean-and-mediterranean?format=HB], published by Cambridge University Press in 2024. Tom Hoogervorst [https://www.kitlv.nl/people/hoogervorst-prof-dr-tom~XAvpg89v/] is a professor at KITLV [https://www.kitlv.nl]. 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 [https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501758232/language-ungoverned/], 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 [https://ac.upd.edu.ph/index.php/faculty-and-staff/regular-faculty/1868-lopez-ariel-c-ph-d] 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 [https://lup.nl/publications/history/global-history/philippine-confluence/], published by Leiden University Press in 2020. Finally, Aireen Grace Andal [https://www.iias.asia/profile/aireen-grace-andal] is a researcher at the Airlangga Institute for Indian Ocean Crossroads [https://www.iias.asia/profile/airlangga-institute-indian-ocean-crossroads-aiioc], 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 [https://www.iias.asia/network/international-consortium-indian-ocean-studies-icios]. 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 [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Soundscapes of Dutch-Japanese Waterworks with Arjan Rietveld

This episode features a conversation with Arjan Rietveld [https://studio-rietveld.com/], a writer and curator in the world of electronic music [https://antennebooks.com/en-eu/products/hypnotised-a-journey-through-trance-music-1990-2005]. Arjan is the founder of Field Records [https://fieldrec.bandcamp.com/], which has released a string of experimental and artistically driven albums since the label was launched in 2008. In this discussion, Arjan introduces Waterworks [https://waterworksproject.nl/en], 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 [https://yuionodera.bandcamp.com/album/kiso-three-rivers] of [https://chiheihatakeyama.bandcamp.com/album/hachir-gata-lake] albums [https://sugaiken.bandcamp.com/album/tone-river] 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. [https://waterworksproject.nl/en]  ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.