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. Serels work can be found at: https://www.zmo.de/personen/dr-steven-serels

Please also check out especially his two monographs:

• The Impoverishment of the African Red Sea Littoral 1640-1945 (Cham, CH: Palgrave, 2018): https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319941646

This podcast was produced with the help of with Renée Manderville (Project Manager, IOWC) Philip Gooding, and Archisman Chaudhuri (both postdoctoral fellows, IOWC, McGill)

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://www.appraisingrisk.com/2020/09/16/ondaatje-animal-ascension/. 

Ondaatje is now working at KnowHistory (https://knowhistory.ca/) as a Research Associate of Indigenous genealogies. His Masters thesis can be found here: https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/handle/1974/27991

This podcast was produced with the help of Renée Manderville (Project Manager, IOWC), Archisman Chaudhuri, and Philip Gooding (both postdoctoral fellows, IOWC, McGill).

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 intense—moments of care, kinship, violence, politics, indifference, and desire that occur between human and non-human animals.

For more on the book, see: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo28301734.html

For more on Prof. Govindrajan’s work, see her bio at: https://anthropology.washington.edu/people/radhika-govindrajan

This podcast was produced with the help of Renée Manderville (Project Manager, IOWC), Archisman Chaudhuri, and Philip Gooding (postdoctoral fellows, IOWC, McGill).

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 animals resulting from trade.

The book is available here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-42595-1

This podcast was produced with the help of Renée Manderville (Project Manager, IOWC) and Dr. Archisman Chaudhuri (postdoctoral fellow, IOWC).

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 between the disappearance of highly endemic and specialized fishes and the loss of forest.

To see the visual form of this podcast, see: https://www.appraisingrisk.com/2020/08/31/land-cover-and-freshwater-fish-in-madagascar/

For more on their project, see: http://fishandforests.geog.mcgill.ca/

For more on Prof. Kalacska’s work, see: https://www.mcgill.ca/geography/people-0/kalacska

For related publications, see:

• P.N. Reinthal and M.L.J. Stiassny, ‘The freshwater fishes of Madagascar: A study of endangered fauna with recommendations for a conservation strategy,’ Conservation Biology, 5, 2 (1991): 231-243.

This podcast was produced with the help of Renée Manderville, Archisman Chaudhuri, and Philip Gooding (all IOWC, McGill)

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 of indigenous populations and on colonial science.

For more on Prof. Warren’s work, see:

http://profiles.murdoch.edu.au/myprofile/james-warren/ and

https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/view/author/Warren,_James.html

This podcast was produced with the help of Renée Manderville (Project Manager, IOWC), Archisman Chaudhuri and Philip Gooding (both postdoctoral fellows, IOWC, McGill).

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:

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 Unruh and Mourad Shalaby, ‘A volatile interaction between peacebuilding priorities: road infrastructure (re)construction and land rights in Afghanistan,’ Progress in Development Studies, 12, 1 (2012): 47-61.

Jon D. Unruh, ‘Mass Claims in Land and Property Following the Arab Spring: Lessons from Yemen,’ Stability: International Journal of Security & Development, 5, 1, (2016): 1–19.

Jon D. Unruh, ‘Weaponization of the Land and Property Rights system in the Syrian civil war: facilitating restitution?’ Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 10, 4 (2016): 453-71.

For more on Prof. Unruh’s work, see his bio at: https://www.mcgill.ca/geography/people-0/unruh

This podcast was produced with the help of Renee Manderville (Project Manager), Archisman Chaudhuri, and Philip Gooding (both postdoctoral fellows of the IOWC).

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-directory/DebjaniBhattacharyya/

For more on the book we discuss in this podcast see: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/empire-and-ecology-in-the-bengal-delta/4741DB240F1EACD9E1AFDDDFD9EE74AA

This podcast was produced with the help of Renée Manderville (Project Manager, IOWC), Archisman Chaudhuri and Philip Gooding (both postdoctoral fellows, IOWC, McGill).

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).