Seminar-room history across Asia.
The gist
Asian Studies Centre is an academic audio archive of seminars, book events, and research interviews centered on Asia, with a strong recent emphasis on South Asian history and coin collections. Its episodes move patiently through evidence, institutions, archives, and the politics of how knowledge is made.
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About Asian Studies Centre
Asian Studies Centre is an academic podcast feed of lectures, seminars, book events, and research interviews connected to Asian studies at Oxford. Its recent episodes lean strongly toward South Asian history, museum collections, and Indian numismatics. The pacing is measured and institutional. Speakers are introduced with care, projects are situated before the argument begins, and the conversation often follows the logic of archival research rather than broadcast storytelling. That gives the show a distinctive texture. It sounds close to the seminar room. Shreya Gupta’s interviews on South Asian coin collections form a clear recent thread, moving through the Ashmolean, the British Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum, and the networks of collectors, curators, scholars, and dealers around them. These episodes ask what happens to Indian coins after they enter UK museums. They also ask whose labor and knowledge become visible when collections are named after European male collectors. The details are precise: catalogues, databases, display cases, exhibitions, research trips, numismatic societies, and the challenge of making tiny objects legible to the public. The feed is not only about coins. One event follows Ashish Rai’s argument about how the Indian National Army trial unsettled British rule and hastened acceptance of Indian independence. Another examines Idi Amin, the Organization of African Unity, Afrocentrism, and the Ugandan Asian expulsion. A Modern South Asian Studies seminar places agrarian reform in Sindh within the politics of development after partition. Across these episodes, the show returns to institutions and power: armies, museums, states, scholarly societies, colonial records, and public memory. It is demanding audio. It rewards listeners who are comfortable with names, dates, specialist vocabulary, and long academic framing. Its appeal lies in access to research conversations while they are still close to the evidence.
Made for: For listeners who want scholarly Asian history with archival depth, especially South Asian politics, museums, and numismatics. It best suits researchers, students, collectors, and historically curious listeners comfortable with formal academic pacing.
What sets it apart: The show’s edge is its proximity to live scholarship: seminars, research interviews, and collection histories presented with the texture of academic work intact. It gives unusual attention to Indian coins as historical evidence and to the institutions that preserve, classify, and interpret them.
In their own words
The Asian Studies Centre was founded in 1982 at St Antony's College and is primarily a co-ordinating organisation which exists to bring together specialists from a wide variety of different disciplines. Geographically, the Centre predominantly covers South, Southeast and East Asia. The Asian Studies Centre works closely with scholars in the Oriental Institute, the Oxford China Centre, the Contemporary South Asian Studies Programme and the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies (in premises at St Antony's). The Asian Studies Centre is host to the Taiwan Studies Programme, Modern Burmese Studies Programme, the South Asian History Seminar Series and the Southeast Asian Studies Seminar Series.
Why you'd press play
A coin stops looking like a button once you hear the history attached to it.
Press play if you want
- the provenance trail behind South Asian coin collections, including the Indian expertise that old labels can obscure
- curators and collectors explaining how catalogues, digitisation, and display choices shape what you can actually learn
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Episodes
- 1
Interview with Joe Cribb on the British Museum coin collection by Shreya Gupta
Hidden gem["Asian Studies Centre's interview with Joe Cribb follows Shreya Gupta's project on the British Museum coin collection, the Ashmolean Museum, and the Fitzwilliam Museum.", "Gupta says she is a third-year PhD researcher at the University of Exeter and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, working on an EHRC-funded project called Decolonizing Collections.", "Cribb traces his start at the British Museum to a Latin-and-Greek degree, a coin-department job, and an early Chinese-coin education from his older brother.", "The conversation moves through punch-mark chronology, Kanishka dating, museum display design, the coin trade, UNESCO, Afghanistan hoards, and access for scholars from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, China, and Russia."]
Dec 4, 2024·1h 26m·5 clips - 2
The Trial that Shook Britain: How a Court Martial Hastened Acceptance of Indian Independence
Hidden gemAshish Rai argues that the Red Fort court-martial of three INA officers on 5 November 1945 helped move Britain from dominion status toward Indian independence in 18 weeks.
Dec 4, 2024·42m·4 clips - 3
Dr Shailendra Bhandare on the Ashmolean Museum’s South Asian coin collections
Hidden gemAsian Studies Centre's interview with Dr.
Aug 23, 2024·41m·2 clips - 4
Jan Lingen, President of the Royal Dutch Numismatic Society, on collecting South Asian Coins
Hidden gemAsian Studies Centre talks with Jan Lingen, a Netherlands-born building engineer and architect who became a South Asian coin collector after working in Delhi for the Netherlands Embassy in 1967-68.
Aug 20, 2024·52m·5 clips - 5
Interview with Dr Paul Stevens on collecting Indian coins by Shreya Gupta
Hidden gemPhD researcher Shreya Gupta interviews longtime collector Paul Stevens about how he began collecting Indian coins in the 1980s after his grandfather's example and a cheap catalogue of Victorian rupees from dealer Spink.
Jul 31, 2024·38m·2 clips - 6
Interview with Robert Bracey on South Asian Coin Collections in the British Museum by Shreya Gupta
Hidden gemShreya Gupta frames the interview around her EHRC-funded 'Decolonizing Collections' project, which tracks four collections of Indian coins at the Ashmolean Museum, the British Museum, and the Fitzwilliam Museum.
Jul 31, 2024·1h 27m·5 clips - 7
Pakistan & India: Common Origins, Divergent Trajectories
Oct 26, 2023·31m - 8
Pakistan & India: Common Origins, Divergent Trajectories
Oct 26, 2023·31m - 9
Along The Path To Gandhi's Neighbor
Jun 16, 2023·51m - 10
Pakistan: Political Economy of an Elite Captured State
May 19, 2023·53m - 11
Nations Ascendant: Towards a Global Intellectual History of Self Determination
Mar 23, 2023·37m - 12
Uncivil Liberalism and the Globalisation of Dadabhai Naoroji’s Ideas of Sociality
Mar 20, 2023·1h 4m - 13
Uncivil Liberalism and the Globalisation of Dadabhai Naoroji’s Ideas of Sociality
Mar 20, 2023·1h 4m - 14
Who are the Muslims? Savarkar on Indian Muslim Origin
Jan 12, 2023·55m - 15
‘Power to the People?’: Citizens and the Everyday State in Early Postcolonial South Asia
Jan 12, 2023·48m - 16
Freedom Between Order and Chaos: Reading a Political Satire From India
Sep 23, 2022·34m - 17
Queer Azaadi and the origins of Indian homonationalism in Kashmir
Sep 23, 2022·38m - 18
Pan-Nationalist Notions of Rights, Indian Khilafat Movement and the Treaty of Lausanne (1923)
Sep 22, 2022·51m - 19
Afrocentrism and the Indian Question: A Continental Reckoning with the Ugandan Expulsion
This episode explores Idi Amin's 1972 expulsion of Asians from Uganda, examining African leaders' responses and the broader geopolitical context.
Jun 27, 2022·23m - 20
Insecurities of Expulsion: Race, Violence, Citizenship and Afro-Asian Entanglements in Transregional Uganda
Jun 27, 2022·21m - 21
Expulsion as Statecraft: Histories of Violence from the Asian Expulsion of 1972 to the Banyarwanda Crisis of 1982
Jun 27, 2022·21m - 22
Researching South Asia: Kashmir
Jan 27, 2022·1h 29m - 23
Rule by Fear: Conceptualizing Democracy and Authoritarianism in Pakistan
Jan 27, 2022·37m - 24
Rule by Fear: Conceptualizing Democracy and Authoritarianism in Pakistan
Jan 27, 2022·37m - 25
Theft of Time: Notes on Spolia and the Writing of Indian History
Jun 23, 2021·46m - 26
Theft of Time: Notes on Spolia and the Writing of Indian History
Jun 23, 2021·46m - 27
"Our History": The Everyday Social and the Sense of Historical Touch
Jun 17, 2021·53m - 28
A Historian among the Goddesses of Modern India
Jun 17, 2021·46m - 29
Monuments in Replica: Imperial Commemorations in Britain and its Colonies
Jun 17, 2021·45m - 30
Like Milk and Sugar
Apr 28, 2021·45m - 31
Education, Nationalism and the Native Body: the Pradnya Pathshala Project
Apr 28, 2021·48m - 32
सत्ता तुझी राणीबाई: Royals in Marathi Writings
Apr 28, 2021·45m - 33
सत्ता तुझी राणीबाई: Royals in Marathi Writings
Apr 28, 2021·45m - 34
Mobilizing transregional indigenous identities on cross-sectional borders
Apr 28, 2021·41m - 35
"वासाड गावाचा धनगर राजा": Ecological Refugees in Ancestral Grass-scape (Historical life space and changing socio-economic dynamics)
Apr 28, 2021·44m - 36
Circuits of interchange and influence: The 1979 Rucha issue on Urdu and Marathi modernist poetry
Apr 28, 2021·44m - 37
Persian Cosmopolis and World Literature in Precolonial Marathi Literary Historiography
Apr 28, 2021·47m - 38
Chand Bibi between Persianate cosmopolitanism and regional particularism
Apr 1, 2021·43m - 39
Chand Bibi between Persianate cosmopolitanism and regional particularism
Apr 1, 2021·43m - 40
Delusional states: Love, Citizenship and Resistance in Gilgit-Baltistan
Feb 10, 2021·47m - 41
A Contrapuntal History of Hindustan
Feb 4, 2021·56m - 42
Jeko Khere So Khaye (He who tills has the right to eat); 'development' and the politics of agrarian reform in late 1940s and early 1950s in Sindh
An academic seminar at Oxford introducing Professor Sara Ansari, who presents a paper on agrarian reforms in 1940s-50s Sindh, Pakistan.
Nov 26, 2020·45m - 43
Rajput loyalties in the Mughal age
Nov 12, 2020·58m - 44
Global histories of hierarachy? Reflections from India on Caste, race and the Black Lives Matter movement
Nov 11, 2020·1h 2m - 45
Domestic audience costs and foreign policy making in India: recent shifts in the BJP's strategy
An academic seminar at Oxford introducing a guest speaker on South Asian international relations and nuclear disarmament.
Nov 5, 2020·1h 1m - 46
Pandemic as event: thinking modern Indian society through a crisis
An academic seminar introducing Professor Dilip Menon and his work on caste and subaltern studies in South India.
Nov 5, 2020·52m - 47
The Saudi Arabia of Muhammad bin Salman: How Much Change?
An academic lecture introducing a talk on Saudi Arabia under Mohammed bin Salman by a leading expert.
Feb 25, 2020·48m - 48
The Young and the Restless: Youth and Politics in India
Mar 1, 2019·31m