Unlocking Academia

In this episode of Unlocking Academia , host Tarin Ahmed is joined by Dr. Lambros Fatsis, Senior Lecturer in Criminology at City St George’s and author of 'Policing the Beats: Black music, racism and criminal injustice', ( Manchester University Press, 2026). Drawing on cultural criminology, Black radical thought and the study of music, Dr. Fatsis’ work examines how Black musical expression has bee...

In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia , host Tarin Ahmed is joined by legal scholar Victor Kattan and researcher Amit Ranjan to discuss their co-edited volume The Breakup of India and Palestine (Manchester University Press). Bringing together a range of contributors, the book examines how two major political ruptures of the twentieth century, the partition of British India and the proposed p...

Welcome to Unlocking Academia, a podcast from Clavis Aurea Podcasts . Unlocking Academia opens the door to the world of scholarship, inviting listeners to engage with the research and ideas driving today's intellectual conversations. In this upcoming season, we explore the latest research in the humanities and social sciences through conversations with the scholars behind recently published books....

In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, host Tarin Ahmed is joined by historian and cultural critic Mikkel Frantzen to explore his new book The Birth of a Financial Thriller: Making a Killing in the 1970s (Edinburgh University Press, 2025). Together they explore how the financial thriller genre emerged in the tumultuous economic climate of the 1970s and why its narrative strategies still shap...

In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, your host, Tarin Ahmed, is joined by guest Dr Hind Elhinnawy, a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Nottingham Trent University and co-director of the Critical Criminology and Social Justice Research Group. Discussing her book, Secular Muslim Feminism: An Alternative Voice in the War of Ideas (Bloomsbury 2024), they unpack the intellectual and personal mo...

In this episode of Unlocking Academia , host Raja Aderdor speaks with Dr. Mutaz Al-Khatib, Associate Professor at the Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics and Director of the Master’s program in Applied Islamic Ethics at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. Together, they explore Key Classical Works on Islamic Ethics (Brill, 2024), a groundbreaking edited volume that brings together foundat...

In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, Tarin Ahmed, the host, is joined by guest, Johanna Drucker,  an American author, book artist, visual theorist, and cultural critic. In a discussion on Drucker's recent publication, Affluvia: The Toxic Off-Gassing of Affluent Culture (Bridge Books, 2025), they cover topics of invisible labour, globalisation, sustainability and more.  Affluvia , a neologi...

In this episode of Unlocking Academia , host Raja Aderdor speaks with Dr. Basma A. S. Dajani, Professor of Arabic Language and Literature, in a sweeping conversation on Arab-Andalusian love poetry and the cultural, linguistic, and emotional legacies it continues to inspire. Rooted in her 1994 book The Arab Andalusian Love Poetry: A Study of the Interaction Between Place and Man Through Time (AU Ca...

In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, Tarin Ahmed, the host, is joined by guest, William Jennings, a senior lecturer in French at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, and author of Dibia's World.: Life on an Early Sugar Plantation (Liverpool UP, 2023). William discusses the importance of names, voice and the community life of a hundred slaves on an early sugar plantation. Dibia's World...

In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia , host Raja Aderdor sits down with Marc Owen Jones, associate professor at Northwestern University in Qatar, to explore the complex world of digital deception in the Middle East, as outlined in his book Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation and Social Media (Hurst/Oxford UP, 2021). Marc draws on years of experience growin...

In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, Tarin Ahmed, the host, unpacks the translation of this incredible text with Tim Mackintosh-Smith, a Senior Research Fellow at New York University in Abu Dhabi, the translator of this publication. Tim shares his story of how he first came across the original source text, his journey of translation, and even anecdotes on friendships and wonderful memories...

In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia , Raja Aderdor, the host, delves deeper into this fascinating work with Jeremy Farrell, a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at Leiden University, who co-authored a translation of this novella. Jeremy shares his insights into the satire, the medical practices described, and how Ibn Buṭlān's critique resonates with today's debates on medicine and misinformatio...

Kalīlah and Dimnah: Fables of Virtue and Vice by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, translated by Michael Fishbein and James E. Montgomery, with a foreword by Marina Warner (Library of Arabic Literature, NYU Press, 2022), is a vibrant new rendition of a literary classic that has captivated readers for centuries. Rooted in ancient Indian storytelling and adapted into Arabic literature, this collection of fables uses...

Johanna Drucker’s Iliazd: A Meta-Biography of a Modernist   (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020) uncovers the enigmatic life and work of Ilia Zdanevich, better known as Iliazd, a revolutionary figure in modernist art and literature. The book explores Iliazd’s journey from his beginnings in the Russian Futurist avant-garde to his later experiments with artist books in Paris, where he collaborated...

We are Clavis Aurea : a dynamic team constantly looking for ways to make the academic publishing industry grow and to promote groundbreaking academic publications to scholars, students and enthusiasts globally. Based in the renowned publishing city of Leiden, we eat, sleep and breathe publishing! Matteo Barbato’s The Ideology of Democratic Athens: Institutions, Orators and the Mythical Past (Edinb...