Desi Academia Podcast

• In this episode of DAP, Megh, Harsha and Vatsal are joined by Dr. Shannon Philip. Dr. Philip is an Assistant Professor in the Sociology of Gender and Sexuality at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on the relationship between masculinities, femininities and sexualities in cities of the Global South.

  
  

  In this riveting conversation, Dr. Philip takes us through his academic journey and while doing so, gives us a masterclass on his intersectional research. We talk about masculinity in global south and how to study this subject, ethnography, patriarchy, feminism and much more...Listen in!

  
  

  Dr. Philip's book title: Becoming Young Men in a New India: Masculinities, Gender Relations and Violence in the Postcolony 

  
  

  Recommendations

• Vatsal

• Conclave

• Harsha

• Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom

• Sense of Style

• Shannon

• Living a feminist life, Nivedita Menon

• Badhai Do

• The great indian kitchen

• Thappad

• Megh

• Delhi a Novel, kushwant Singh

• Age of Vice,

• How to talk to your cat about gun violence

• Netflix relationship advice, Ananya Pandey

Its pride month 2025 and DAP is back with a new episode. In this episode we are joined by Dr. Ketaki Chaukhani. Dr. Chowkhani is an Assistant Professor at Manipal Centre for Humanities where she teaches India’s first ever course on Singles Studies. Join us in this riveting conversation where she explains what is single studies or "singleism" and her research that attempts to understand boyhood, sexuality and society.

Recommendations

Dr. Chaukhani's selected works:

1. https://www.theswaddle.com/marriage-is-letting-us-down-should-there-be-a-right-not-to-marry

2. Her book: The Limits of Sexuality EducationLove, Sex, and Adolescent Masculinities in Urban India

• Bella de Paulo

• Flop show

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/11/25/should-a-country-speak-a-single-language

In this episode, we are joined by Amit Kaushik, A PhD candidate in the Integrative Conservation and Anthropology, University of Georgia. We talk about his pre-doctoral experiences with wetland conservation in Delhi, GIS work in Ladakh, and human-tiger interactions in Madhya Pradesh. Amit tells us how he found himself in an interdisciplinary program, living his dream to work with wolves with a funding partnership with National Geographic. We discuss his school and college transition from commence to anthropology and conservation, and how art, theatre, people, and administrators contribute to his research work .

Recommendations:

• Amit

• Radhika Govindarajan, Animal Intimacies

• "Jatikaran: Caste, Rats, and the control of space at the Karni Mata Mandir" https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/25148486221094132

• Raghu Chandawat, The rise and fall of the emeraldsforest

• "Protecting India’s tigers and wolves through art, collaboration and conservation | Franklin College of Arts and Sciences" https://www.franklin.uga.edu/news/stories/2024/protecting-indias-tigers-and-wolves-through-art-collaboration-and-conservation

In this special episode, the hosts of Small India Radio (SIR) Podcast Group: Raj, Nishant, Megh, Vatsal, Richa, and MV; talk about their professional experiences in education and workplaces. We talk about how we got here: our degree choices and motivations, experiences growing up in different parts of India, exposure, and moving away from home.

We discuss the impact of Liberalisation and 2014, creating reliable knowledge sources and reading, visiting India, the thoughts of moving back, and the impact of education systems and degrees on our lives.

Check out our sister podcasts!

• Bharatiya Junta Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/3cEQfIblu88FzyHGdVCG0e
• PCCI podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/6oGfaWZ5cbsc18sfeP8g3o

In this episode of DAP, Hassaan joins Megh and Vatsal. Hassaan is a Ph.D. student at the University at Albany, studying Theoretical Physics.

Specifically, he is working on problems in String Theory and Quantum Field Theory. Hassaan also has an amazing YouTube channel called "Phymaths," where he makes videos about all things related to theoretical physics and mathematics. In this episode, Hassaan takes us through his academic journey, what it takes to study theoretical physics, and the fascinating fundamentals of physics that make up his thesis work.

Hassaan's YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3nAENP4F5GKrGk9BLNFLvw

Recommendations:

• Hassaan

• Halliday Resnick, Crane

• University Physics

• Brief History of Time

• Derak belt trick

• KKLT

• Dine Seiberg problem

• Stephen Wineberg

• What we owe to the future

• What is Real, Adam Becker

• Theory and Reality

• Twilight of Democracy

• A Scout Mindset

• Puzzles to Unravel the Universe

• A very Short introduction series: game theory, religion

• Punjab ka Batwara

• Proofs

• Megh

• 4 Lions

• Race, Science, and the Continuing Education of Razib Khan https://undark.org/2017/02/28/race-science-razib-khan-racism/

• Yo Yo Honey Singh, Famous

• Vatsal

• Vlog brothers news letters: We are Here

• The Man Who Took LSD and Changed The World

  
  

  
  

In this special episode, friends of the podcast Ajay and Harsha join Megh to discuss the MIT Tech review, 2024. We discuss major innovations in GenAI, biotech, astronomy, and sustainable technology.

We also consider the impact of the defunding of scientific bodies in the US and the deregulation of BigTech, and whether the innovations of 2024 will have a chance to scale.

Recommendations and References:

• Google CEO Sundar Pichai on AI-powered search and the future of the web: https://www.theverge.com/24158374/google-ceo-sundar-pichai-ai-search-gemini-future-of-the-internet-web-openai-decoder-interview

• MIT Technology Review- 10 Breakthrough Technologies: https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/01/03/1109178/10-breakthrough-technologies-2025/

• Hugging Face  Pleias 1.0 models:  https://huggingface.co/blog/Pclanglais/common-models

• AI is ‘beating’ humans at empathy and creativity. But these games are rigged: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/28/ai-empathy-humans

• Can LLMs Generate Novel Research Ideas? A Large-Scale Human Study with 100+ NLP Researchers: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.04109 

• All That Glitters is Not Novel: Plagiarism in AI Generated Research: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.16487 

• Patal Lok S2

In this episode of DAP, Megh, Vatsal, and a friend of the pod, Dr. Harish Prakash, are joined by Dr. Vivek Nityananda.

Dr. Nityananda is an outstanding behavioral ecologist and a senior lecturer at Newcastle University. His multidisciplinary research aims to understand animal behavior by combining psychology, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and ecology.

Join us as Dr. Nityananda discusses his academic journey, motivations, and research on bees, praying mantis, crickets, and other insects. Moreover, he takes us through his fascinating current research that dissects the evolutionary persistence of “overconfidence,” which is also the subject of his new book titled “Beyond Doubt.”

Recommendations:

• Vivek

• The Empire Podcast, William Darlymple and Anita Anand

• The Last of Us

• Harish

• Daryl Dickson

• Vatsal

• Aeons: Surviving Deep Time

• Vettaiyan

• Megh

• Sabrina

• Scent of a Woman

This episode, we are joined by Professor Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal (@ranjodhd), from the Digital Humanities Lab, University of Basel. We learn about his transition from engineering to literature, and how his foundation in STEM education contributes to his work in science and technology studies.

We discuss his work on how science is shaped by narratives and capital, and how technical experts and scientists invent many means to express what they observe and find. Our conversation leads to a discussion of the technical aspects of science communication, building video games for research, and the impact of social media on how science is transmitted and popularised.

Recommendations

In this episode of DAP, we are joined by Professor Mamta Saxena , associate professor at the State University of New York (Oswego). We learn about the field of Human Development and Sibling Studies, and it's relationship with other fields in social sciences. Professor Saxena tells us about her PhD journey, and ongoing research projects.

Recommendations

In this episode, we are joined by recent PhD graduate Dr. Ishaan Bhat (@Doctor_Woah) who shares his experience dissertating in European academia. Ishaan walks us through his specialisation in image recognition and ML/DL algorithms, his interdisciplinary collaboration with medical doctors, and his doctoral research on uncertainty estimation and improving reliability in predictions made by image recognition algorithms. We also chat about his dissertation defence experience.

We cover the unique challenges and joys of applied research, the complications of working with protected data, and the importance of open science, reproducibility, and code+paper style publications.

Recommendations