The Nordic Asia Podcast

In this episode, Hermann Aubié talks with Outi Luova about the methods of information control that have been applied by China's party-state since the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak. What were the possible reasons that enabled the party-state's politics to prevent China's infectious disease surveillance and reporting system from working? How does the Communist Party of China try to manage the flow of information about the pandemic not only in China, but globally?

In this podcast, Martin Seeger from the University of Leeds joins Petra Desatova to talk about his recent book Gender and the Path to Awakening: Hidden Histories of Nuns in Modern Thai Buddhism jointly published by Silkworm Books and NIAS Press. Martin shares his insights into how he researched this fascinating topic and how he discovered that an unknown female Buddhist practitioner was the true author of well-known Thai Buddhist texts that had been wrongly attributed to a prominent male monk. 

In this episode, Kristin Eggeling talks to Petra Desatova about her recently published book ‘Nation-Branding in Practice: The Politics of Promoting Sports, Cities and Universities in Kazakhstan and Qatar.’ How do Kazakstan and Qatar brand themselves to the outside world and their own citizens? What lies behind Kazakstan’s re-branding of its capital city Nur-Sultan (formerly Astana)? And how does one even research this elusive concept of nation branding? 

In this episode, Lucrezia Canzutti talks to Petra Desatova about the lives of ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia: who are these people? How did they end up living in Cambodia? What is their relationship with the Cambodian state? And why are their lives so precarious? Join us for this fascinating talk about ethnicity, citizenship and Cambodian politics.

Since becoming a constitutional monarchy in 1932, Thailand has been governed by twenty different constitutions. Although they all had their own unique features, constitutions from 1997 onwards placed much emphasis on judiciary and elite watchdog agencies as the righteous arbiters of Thai political life. In this podcast, Khemthong Tonsakulrungruang talks to Petra Desatova about this constitutional change and its roots in traditional Buddhist notions of power and karma.

In this episode, Helene Maria Kyed joins Duncan McCargo for a conversation about her upcoming book 'Everyday Justice in Myanmar'. Kyed shares her insights on the project behind the book, and justice and informal resolutions in Myanmar. Based on a unique collection of ethnographic studies, 'Everyday Justice in Myanmar: Informal Resolutions and State Evasion in a Time of Contested Transition' is the first book to explore how ordinary people in Myanmar access justice and resolve disputes, and will be published in August2020 by NIAS Press. You can read more about it here: http://niaspress.dk/book/everyday-justice-in-myanmar/ 

For more than 60 years, Malaysian politics was extremely predictable - the same dominant party, UMNO, had remained in power since independence. All that changed in 2018, and with the latest change of government this March, all bets are off. In this podcast, leading Malaysia expert Bridget Welsh of the University of Nottingham's Malaysia campus discusses these fascinating developments with Duncan McCargo.

In this episode, Jyrki Kallio from the Finnish Institute of International Affairs joins Andreas Bøje Forsby from NIAS to talk about Finnish-Chinese relations, which are officially guided by the so-called ‘future-oriented new-type cooperative partnership’. Their wide-ranging conversation covers Chinese investments in Finland, Huawei and 5G technology, the Belt & Road Initiative, and Finland’s position in the EU with respect to China-related issues.  

In this episode Björn Jerdén from the Swedish Institute of International Affairs joins Andreas Bøje Forsby from NIAS to talk about Sweden-China relations which have taken a significant downward turn over the past couple of years. The conversation revolves around a number of specific topics that have recently dominated bilateral relations, including the “Gui Minhai” case, the assertive role played by the Chinese embassy in Stockholm, Chinese economic investments in Sweden, the Covid-19 pandemic and the US-China great power rivalry.

In this COVID-19 episode that is recorded in India and enlivened with Indian soundscapes, Marjaana Jauhola and Shyam Gadhavi talk about the lockdown in Kachchh district, Gujarat and give voices to farmers and urban poor on their concerns of the impact of COVID-19 on their daily life. A longer video version of the episode is available here https://youtu.be/T0ADjM2avf4