The Wolfson Exchange Podcast: Conversations Across Disciplines at Wolfson College Cambridge

In this episode, we bring you a panel discussion titled “From Baku to the Amazon: Climate Justice, Finance and Our Common Future at COP30.” Part of the Wolfson college Sustainability and Conservation Networks, this event reflects on the recent announcements in Belém, which outline a just transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. The panel features Counsellor Gunel Salimova from the Embassy of Azerbaijan UK, anthropologist and Jesus College Cambridge Fellow Dr Natalia Buitron, filmmaker and activist from the Amazone biome, Priscila Tapajowara, and serial entrepreneur, impact investor and Wolfson College Fellow Dr Robin Daniels. Together, they discuss climate justice and climate finance, amplify Indigenous perspectives from the Amazon biome, and explore pathways towards a more equitable future for the Global South. *Gunel Salimova is a Political Counsellor atEmbassy of Azerbaijan in the United Kingdom since October 2023.  A career diplomat, Mrs Salimova joined theMinistry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Azerbaijan in 2012 and has since worked in different positions within the Ministry covering the issues related to Azerbaijan’s membership to different international institutions, includingthe United Nations, the Non Aligned Movement and others. Between 2022-2023 she has worked as the Head of Global Risks and Threats Unit within the International Security Department at MFA Azerbaijan. G.Salimova earned her BA in Regional Studies from Baku State University and MA in Diplomacy and International Affairs from Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy (ADA University). She is fluent in English, Turkish and Russian languages. She is married with two kids. Dr Natalia Buitron is an anthropologist exploring political subjectivities, indigeneity, and development, specifically how broader political and economic forms interweave with moral transformation in daily life. She has researched, written and taught on a wide range of issues pertaining to indigenous-state relations, (in)equality, intercultural education, writing and childhood. She is a Fellow of Jesus College.Priscila Tapajowara is an indigenous woman from the Amazon biome, born in the ancestral territory of the Tapajó people, Santarém, Pará. She is a filmmaker, and photographer and she was chosen by EFE and Sanchamama as one of the 100 Latinos most committed to climate action in 2023 and 2024. Since 2013, she has been showing the struggle and culture of indigenous peoples through photography and in 2018 she graduated in Audiovisual Production from FAPCOM College, becoming the first indigenous woman to graduate from the institution. In the indigenous communication organisation Mídia Indígena she serves as president and vice-president of the Território da Artes Institute.Dr Robin Daniels is a serial company founder, innovator and impact investor. He is focused on the environmentally sensitive application of technologies and new business models to drive innovation and investment into the global fight against climate change, social inequality and habitat loss. He is a Fellow of Wolfson College.Opening Comments by: Prajakti Kalra (Wolfson College) & Prof. Siddharth Saxena (Jesus College),Visuals: Photo sourced from Unsplash.Music: “Treetone” by Airtone, used under Creative Commons license via CC Mixter. Mixer & Editor: Lily Tekseng

In this episode, we bring you a keynote lecture by Professor A. R. Venkatachalapathy of the Madras Institute of Development Studies India. Delivered as a part of the conference “Nations, Networks, Narratives: Rethinking South and Southeast Asia,” held over three days in September to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Centre for South Asian Studies and Wolfson College, Cambridge, Prof Venkatachalapathy traces the story of the Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company, a bold indigenous commercial venture in the early twentieth century that challenged the British India Steam Navigation Company, which then dominated shipping in the region. At the centre of this story is its founder, V. O. Chidambaram Pillai, whose audacious vision sought to connect this local struggle to a wider global anti-imperial movement. The lecture reveals the transnational networks of politics, commerce, and solidarity that resisted colonial domination in the early 20th century. *A.R. Venkatachalapathy (1967) was born in Gudiyattam, in the Vellore district of Tamil Nadu and was educated in Chennai and New Delhi. A historian and Tamil writer, he is a professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai. Chalapathy has taught at universities in Tirunelveli, Chennai, Singapore and Chicago, and has held research assignments in Paris, Cambridge, London, and Harvard. He is the winner of the V.K.R.V. Rao Prize; Vilakku Virudhu and Iyal Virudhu (both for lifetime contribution to Tamil literature) and the Mahakavi Bharati Award. Chalapathy has published widely on the social, cultural and intellectual history of colonial Tamil Nadu. Apart from his writings in English, he has written or edited over thirty books in Tamil.  Shailaja Fennell is Professor of Economic Security and Resilience in the Department of Land Economy. She obtained her B.A, M. A. and M.Phil. in Economics from Delhi University, before coming to the University of Cambridge to obtain another M.Phil. and then her PhD. in Economics at the Faculty of Economics. She is a fellow of Jesus College, and also Director of the Centre of South Asian Studies. Her research interests include economic security and ecological change, community and national resilience, and institutional reform and regional transformation. She has a particular focus on local and sub-national decision making in rural and urban policy design, agricultural sustainability and food security; youth, migration and employment aspirations; provision of public goods in the spheres of education and health. Visuals: Photo sourced from Unsplash.Music: “Treetone” by Airtone, used under Creative Commons license via CC Mixter. Mixer & Editor: Lily Tekseng

In this episode, we bring you a fascinating exploration of the global history of the karakul fur trade in South and Central Asia. This keynote address by Professor Magnus Marsden, and chaired by Professor Susan Bayly, was delivered for the “Nations, Networks, Narratives: Rethinking South and Southeast Asia”  conference, held over three days in September this year to mark the 60th anniversary of the Centre for South Asian Studies and Wolfson College, Cambridge. Magnus Marsden is Professor of Social Anthropology and Director of the Asia Centre at the University of Sussex. His work is centrally concerned with the study of Asia's Muslim societies. Magnus has conducted extensive fieldwork in Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan, as well as with diasporic communities from this region in the Gulf, Eastern Europe, and China. He is the author of Living Islam: Muslim Religious Experience in Northern Pakistan (Cambridge, 2005), and Trading Worlds: Afghan Merchants across Modern Frontiers (Oxford, 2015). He also jointly authored with B.D Hopkins Fragments of the Afghan Frontier (Oxford, 2015) and has co-edited Anthropological Approaches to Muslim Worlds (Springer 2013, and Beyond Swat (Oxford 2013). He sits on the International Advisory Board of Central Asian Survey and the Editorial Board of Modern Asian Studies. He completed his PhD at Trinity College, Cambridge in 2002. Between 2002 and 2007, he was the Graduate Officer in Research at the Centre of South Asian Studies and a Title A Research Fellow at Trinity College. He then moved in 2007 to the Department of Social Anthropology at SOAS, University of London, before joining Sussex as Professor of Social Anthropology in November 2013. Over this period, his research has been funded by major grants from the Leverhulme Trust, the ERC (Advanced Grant), and AHRC. His research has also been supported by smaller grants awarded by Trinity College, Cambridge, SOAS, University of London, the University of Sussex, the Nuffield Foundation and the British Academy. Susan Bayly is Professor of Historical Anthropology (Emerita) in the Cambridge University Department of Social Anthropology. Her research focuses on colonialism and its cultural afterlife in Asia's former French and British colonies. She regularly conducts ethnographic research in Vietnam as part of a larger comparative project on empire and post-colonial transformations in a variety of periods and settings. She has completed a study of Hanoi intelligentsia families in the former socialist world system, and more recently a comparative project with Dr Nicholas Long of LSE on Achievement & Competitiveness in Vietnam & Indonesia, involving fieldwork on the ways achievement is enacted and understood in these two key sites of Southeast Asian transformation experiences. She is also researching the many forms of official and personal visual culture that form a key context for the understanding of citizenship and the modern family in today's Hanoi. Professor Bayly retains a long-standing research interest in India, where she has focused on caste, religious conversion and a variety of translocal social and cultural movements. She is a former editor of The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and has theoretical interests in the study of modernity, visuality, theories of historical change, and the disciplinary interface between history and anthropology. Her recent publications include Asian Lives in Anthropological Perspective: Essays on Morality, Achievement and Modernity (Berghahn Books: 2024). She has also published studies of the Indian caste system, and of Indian religion in its historical and anthropological contexts. Visuals: Photo sourced from Unsplash.Music: “Treetone” by Airtone, used under Creative Commons license via CC Mixter. Mixer & Editor: Lily Tekseng

This event is part of the Wolfson College Research Network’s (WCRN) Conversation with Fellows series, which brings you research conducted by Wolfson College Fellows. Get to know what the Fellows publish, the research questions that keep them up at night, and join discussions that are topical and thought-provoking.In this conversation, we explore the global governance architecture with Dr Charles Jones, drawing on his expertise to examine key ideas shaping the field, including debates such as the North/South debate and its implications for contemporary international relations.Dr Charles Jones is a historian, Wolfson College Fellow, and Emeritus Reader in International Relations with interests in International Relations, war, Argentina, and Victorian radical feminism. He received his BA in Moral Sciences and History from Clare College, Cambridge, and completed his doctorate on Anglo-Argentine commercial relations before 1914. He later earned an MA in Philosophy from the University of Warwick, where he was a pioneer in teaching International Political Economy (IPE), particularly focusing on North-South relations. Upon returning to Cambridge in 1998, he taught International Relations Theory and lectured in the Centre of Latin American Studies, serving twice as the Centre's Director. Dr Jones helped develop the new field of international political economy by teaching and publishing on North-South relations and developing courses on the politics of international trade and transnational enterprise. Co-author, with Barry Buzan and Richard Little, of an influential critique of neorealism, The Logic of Anarchy (Columbia University Press, 1993), he went on to write E. H. Carr and International Relations (1998). Later Jones worked on the ethics and narratives of war. His most recent books are, American Civilization (University of London SAS, 2007) which explored hemispheric commonalities, More than Just War (Routledge, 2013), which offered a critique of contemporary just war discourse and a literary exploration of military ethics, and International Relations: A Beginner’s Guide (Oneword, 2013), which speaks for itself.  Prajakti Kalra is the Wolfson College Research Networks Manager and a Central Asianist. She plays a pivotal role in fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and advancing the College’s research initiatives. Her responsibilities include coordinating research activities, facilitating communication among scholars, and supporting the development of academic networks within the Wolfson community.Alongside her administrative work, Prajakti actively contributes to scholarly discourse. Her academic background spans history, political science, and psychology, informing her interdisciplinary approach to research. She is an alumna of Jesus College, University of Cambridge; the University of Chicago; and Indiana University Bloomington. She can be followed on LinkedIn and on X (Twitter) at @PrajaktiK.Visuals: Photo sourced from Unsplash.Music: “Treetone” by Airtone, used under Creative Commons license via CC Mixter. Mixer & Editor: Lily Tekseng