Sea coasts around the world and the seas themselves have been integral to the history of urban settlement in terms of the social, cultural and material movements they have enabled. The liminal materiality of seashores have historically engendered fluidity in inhabitation by fishing and nomadic communities. But these geographies are increasingly appropriated by developmental, state and environmental interests, their claims intensified by governmentalities of ecological vulnerability.

This podcast sets up a cross-disciplinary conversation on seacoasts, cities and the urban and political processes they are entangled in. The first series has a geographical focus on the shoreline of Tamil Nadu, on the southeastern coast of India, where interventions post the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami have affected sea change so to speak. Each episode features an invited academic guest to discuss their research on this coastline.

In initiating an academic conversation on political claims over coastal geographies, many of which arise from indigenous and labour movements, the launch event will grapple with the question of who the broadcast is for and how academic dissemination can contribute towards effective political communication with and for the constituents of research.

We will email those who have registered for a ticket the Zoom information closer to the event.

Main discussants

Ajantha Subramanian - Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies at Harvard University

Her research interests include political economy, political ecology, colonialism and postcoloniality, space, citizenship, South Asia, and the South Asian diaspora. Her first book Shorelines: Space and Rights in South India (Stanford University Press, 2009), chronicles the struggles for resource rights by Catholic fishers on India’s southwestern coast, with a focus on how they have used spatial imaginaries and practices to constitute themselves as political subjects.

Senthil Babu - Historian of science, based at the French Institute of Pondicherry

Senthil has been building a research programme in Nature, Knowledge and Labour which has a significant focus on the Coromandel Coast. His book on the social history of mathematical practices in south India will be published soon by Oxford University Press, Delhi. He is involved in wide-ranging labour, land and environmental struggles in the region and is part of the coastal people's right to life movement in Tamil Nadu.

Other speakers (podcast guests):

Bhagath Singh A - Postdoctoral Research Associate, Social Sciences, French Institute of Pondicherry

Oviya Govindan - PhD Candidate in Anthropology, University of California Irvine

Prabhakar Jayaprakash - PhD Candidate in Anthropology, Tata Institute of Social Sciences Mumbai

Sneha Krishnan - Associate Professor in Human Geography, University of Oxford

Tamara Fernando - PhD Candidate in History, University of Cambridge

Chair

Niranjana Ramesh

Niranjana is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow based at the Department of Geography & Environment, London School of Economics & Political Science. Her research has spanned the various waterways of Chennai, including desalinated and piped water, marshlands and now seawater. Her current project attempts to write the city from the perspective of the sea and the artisanal fishers inhabiting its urban coastline.

Communicating Coastal Ecologies: launch of bilingual podcast Alainagaram