Lalita du Perron talks to Eduardo Acosta (Mellon Fellow at Stanford History) about his PhD from the University of Chicago, the colonial preoccupation to control rivers, climate change, and how time is in fact a cultural construct. 

Lalita du Perron welcomes Karthick Ram Manoharan to discuss his latest book Periyar: a study in political atheism (Orient Black Swan, 2022) and his new research while a visiting fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center. 

Apologies for occasional sound issues.

Lalita du Perron talks to Ana Cristina Lopes about her work on transnational Tibetan Buddhism, her book Tibetan Buddhism in Diaspora, and her new work on the 84,000 project, whose mission is to translate all of the Buddha’s words into modern languages, and provide open and free access to over 230,000 pages. Find out more at 84000.co.

Lalita du Perron welcomes Robert Rakove from International Relations at Stanford to talk about his new book Days of Opportunity: The United States and Afghanistan before the Soviet Invasion.

Book link: http://cup.columbia.edu/book/days-of-opportunity/9780231210454

Lalita du Perron talks to Gowri Shankar of https://www.kalingafoundation.org/ about his work on the King Cobra, how being bitten by a snake sparked his PhD research, and how to keep ourselves and animals safe.

Lalita du Perron talks to Rabia Saeed, current Wallace Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing, about her journey from Kohat, Pakistan, to Stanford and beyond.

Links to her stories:

https://theseventhwave.org/rabia-saeed/

https://www.litromagazine.com/usa/2021/03/jfk-by-rabia-saeed/

Lalita du Perron talks to Isabel Salovaara, Ph.D. student in Anthropology at Stanford University, about her research project on the tuition and coaching industry in India, and her fieldwork in Patna in particular.

Lalita du Perron talks to Aidan Milliff, Postdoctoral Fellow in Contemporary Asia, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), about the choices people make when faced with state or community violence, what it means to be a political scientist, and the excellent community of South Asia scholars at Stanford!

Lalita du Perron talks to Shripad “Tulja” Tuljapurkar, Professor of Biology at Stanford, about his work on demographics, his love of food, and his undergraduate class on the chili pepper.

Lalita du Perron talks to Gulika Reddy, Assistant Professor in the Stanford Law School and Director of the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic, about her work as a lawyer, teacher, organizer, and activist, and the NGO she started, Schools of Equality.