The Indian Ocean World Podcast

Dr. Emily Brownell (University of Edinburgh) discusses with Dr. Philip Gooding (IOWC) her recently-published book, Gone to Ground: A history of environment and infrastructure in Dar es Salaam (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020). Dr. Brownell’s book breaks new ground in urban environmental history, discussing how Dar es Salaam’s urban inhabitants oriented themselves to the city’s rur...

In our latest episode of the Indian Ocean World Podcast, Prof. Annu Jalais, an anthropologist and an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore, talks about the Sundarbans, the largest delta in the world that sprawls across India and Bangladesh along the Bay of Bengal. The Sundarbans supports a unique biodiverse environment of mangroves, tigers, crocodiles, snakes, and humans. Pro...

In this podcast, the IOWC interviews Professor Jenny Goldstein of Cornell University on her research into Indonesia's peatlands. Her interview offers a discussion of her unique journey from architecture to geography, and an in-depth explanation of how the Indonesian peatlands became her subject of study. She further explores the value of so-called degraded lands from a biodiversity and regenerativ...

Professor Rosabelle Boswell (Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University) discusses with Philip Gooding (IOWC) her recent appointment as the South African Research Chair in Ocean cultures and heritage. This is a new and exciting position designed to contribute to the sustainability of the ocean and to build partnerships with stakeholders. Prof. Boswell discusses her aims for the position, its interdisc...

To start off the second season of the Indian Ocean World Podcast, we had the pleasure of interviewing Mustafa Emre Günaydı, a PhD student at Iowa State University, and research assistant working on the IOWC's Appraising Risk Partnership. In our podcast, Günaydi presents his ongoing research into the environmental history of the Ottoman Empire, analyzing the effects of the floods, epidemic, and loc...

Gwyn Campbell, founding director of the IOWC, discusses with Philip Gooding, a postdoctoral fellow at the same institution, his forthcoming book, The Travels of Robert Lyall, 1789-1831: Scottish surgeon, naturalist and British agent to the court of Madagascar, which will be published with Palgrave in early 2021: https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030516475 The discussion takes the listener throu...

Dr. Joseph McQuade (University of Toronto) discusses his recently published book, A Genealogy of Terrorism: Colonial law and th e origins of an idea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2020) , as well as his ongoing postdoctoral research. In A Genealogy of Terrorism, McQuade demonstrates how the modern concept of terrorism was shaped by colonial emergency laws dating back into the nineteenth a...

Prof. Angela Schottenhammer (KU Leuven) discusses her and her team’s ongoing research into maritime disasters, risk appraisals, and exchanges of medicinal knowledge in East Asian Waters in c.1500-1800. Several themes are discussed, which transcend the disciplines of climate history, maritime archaeology, and medical history. She refers to typhoons, currents, diseases, and the material cultures of...

With the help of Dr. Alexander Jost, Xu Zhexin (both University of Salzburg) discusses his PhD research into the history of maritime activities in South and Southeast China and its neighbouring regions during the co-called Tang-Song transition period, which is based on his analysis of official records, inscription sources, and visual materials. Thank you also to Prof. Angela Schottenhammer (KU Leu...

Prof. Shaila Seshia Galvin (Graduate Institute of International Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland) discusses her anthropological and sociological work on organic Basmati rice farming in the Doon Valley, Uttarakhand,  India. She explores how a locally produced commodity acquires new meanings through organic certification procedures, as well as the socio-economic and cultural implications of...

Meera Muralidharan, a doctoral researcher at the School of History, Victoria University, Wellington, discusses her paper, ‘Hortus Malabaricus: Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the Production of Natural History Knowledge in Malabar (1678-1693),’ which won the Research Excellence Award at the Victoria University Awards in 2019 and is a part of her doctoral research. Key themes include global trans...

Dr. Anna Winterbottom (McGill) discusses her forthcoming journal article, ‘”Becoming traditional”: A transnational history of neem and biopiracy discourses,’ which is due to be published in 2021 in Osiris. The article is part of a special issue entitled ‘Global medical cultures, properties and laws,’ and explores the shifting uses and cultural meanings of neem, a tree of the mahogany family native...

Prof. Thomas Kuehn (Simon Fraser University) discusses his forthcoming chapter, ‘Managing the hazards of Yemen’s natural environment. Nature and imperial governance in Ottoman South West Arabia, 1872-1914.’ Key themes include imperial governance, human-environment interaction in the context of ‘challenging’ environments, and knowledge production in the late Ottoman Empire. Prof. Kuehn is also the...

Professor Michael Christopher Low (Iowa State University and NYU Abu Dhabi) discusses his new book, Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020). Key themes include technological change, disease, and the British and Ottoman Empires in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More information about the book can be found at: http://cu...

Dr. Steven Serels (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient) discusses his research into animal diseases as threats to state power in the history of the Southern Red Sea Region (SRSR). The discussion weaves around diseases to camels, horses, and cattle, and brings up key themes of human-environment interaction, military uses for animals, colonial rule, and global climatic anomalies.  More details of Dr. Se...

Akash Ondaatje, a recently graduated Masters candidate at Queens University, discusses his thesis, ‘Animal Ascension: Elevation and Debasement Through Human-Animal Associations in English Satire, 1700 -1820,’ thus continuing our recent theme on animal studies, and tracing the lives of some IOW animals into European cultural frameworks. To see the visual format of this podcast, please see: https://...

Professor Radhika Govindrajan (University of Washington) discusses her award winning book, Animal Intimacies: Interspecies relatedness in India’s Central Himalayas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018) with Renée Manderville, Archisman Chaudhuri, and Philip Gooding (all IOWC). Animal Intimacies explores what ­it means to live and die in relation to other animals, alongside the intimate—and...

Martha Chaiklin and Philip Gooding discuss their recently published edited volume, Animal Trade Histories in the Indian Ocean World (Cham, CH: Palgrave, 2020). As part of their discussion, they explore themes including, animals in world history, animals’ relationships to climate change and the anthropocene/capitalocene debate, methodologies for studying animal histories, and cultural symbolisms of...

Professor Margaret Kalacska and Dr. Oliver Lucanus (both McGill) discuss their project, Fish and Forest. This interdisciplinary work uses data from historical aerial photography, satellite imagery, and new information captured by UAV and in-situ observations to investigate and document the historical changes in the habitat of threatened aquatic species. In so doing, it seeks to explain the link be...

Professor James Warren (Murdoch University) discusses his past and ongoing research into the effects of global climatic oscillations on the history of the Philippines. In this podcast episode, he examines the role of ENSO-related climatic anomalies and typhoons on the colonial monocrops of tobacco (Spanish era) and sugar (American era). In these contexts, he also responds to questions on the lives...

Professor Brian Tomaszewski of the Rochester Institute of Technology discusses his work on digital map-making and disaster management. To see the visual format of this podcast, please see https://www.appraisingrisk.com/2020/07/27/geographic-information-systems-gis-and-disaster-management/ . For more information on the materials discussed and Professor Tomaszewski's work, see: Youtube Channel:  htt...

Professsor Jon D. Unruh of McGill University discusses his work on land rights and restitution in times of conflict in several regions of the contemporary IOW. Some of the works discussed in the podcast include: Jon D. Unruh and Musa Adam Abdul-Jalil, ‘Constituencies of conflict and opportunity: Land rights, narratives and collective action in Darfur,’ Political Geography, 42 (2014): 104-16. Jon U...

Professor Debjani Bhattacharyya, Drexel University joins the IOW Podcast to discuss her book: Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The making of Calcutta (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), as well as some of her work in progress on credit, climate, and calamity in the Bay of Bengal. For more on Prof. Bhattacharyya’s work, see her bio: https://drexel.edu/coas/faculty-research/faculty...

Archisman Chaudhuri discusses aspects of his PhD thesis, ‘From Camp to Port: Mughal Warfare and the Economy of Coromandel, 1682-1710.’ This podcast was produced with the help of Renee Manderville (IOWC Project Manager) and Philip Gooding (IOWC postdoctoral fellow).

Philip Gooding, a postdoctoral fellow at the Indian Ocean World Centre, discusses his recent article: ‘Tsetse flies, ENSO, and Murder: The Church Missionary Society’s failed East African Ox-Cart Experiment of 1876-78,’ Africa: Rivista semestrale di studi e ricerche, N/S, 1, 2 (2019). The article is available at  https://www.viella.it/rivista/9788833132556 or by contacting Philip Gooding directly:...