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Takhayyul Nativeness and Emergent Issues Podcast

The Takhayyul Nativeness and Emergent Issues podcast series explores the pressing issues taking place in the regions that the team works across

The Institute for Global Prosperity's ERC Project Takhayyul is carried out in eleven different countries in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia, often included in the concept of the Global South, where people are more vulnerable to global changes and crises - as we have seen in the flood catastrophe in Pakistan. Many members of the team are scholars who have expertise in the geographies they grew up in. 

This series has emerged due to the pressing issues that have been taking place in the contexts that the team works on and cares about. The team felt an urgent need to create a platform where they can address the emergent issues as they happen, to channel their intellectual and academic expertise, and express their deep care for the events taking place. 

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Women, Life, Freedom: Iran Uprising & Its International Impact

This episode discusses how the uprisings in Iran were received in different parts of the world, specifically in China, Pakistan, India, Bahrain, Turkey, and the UK. Led by Dr Fatemeh Sadeghi, Research Fellow at the Takhayyul project and a political scientist who is an expert on Iran.

Access the transcript

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Climate and Care During Pakistani Floods

This podcast brings together grass roots civil society activists from the areas most affected by the floods, to tell us about the impact of the floods and the challenges on the ground. Please join in to understand the impact of climate change related crisis and how they affect people’s lives.

Access the transcript

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Narratives and Realities of Violence on the War in the Middle East

This episode hosts three figures, Nazan Üstündağ; Özlem Göner and Sardar Saadi, talking about four Kurdish regions and the rising violence in them. Please listen to understand the current issues in the regions.

Access the transcript

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Global Precarities in the Aftermath of Earthquakes in Turkiye and Syria

This episode discusses the aftermath of the Turkey/Syria Earthquakes and the politics of global precarities in catastrophes with Dr. Aslı Zengin, Dr. Omar Al-Gazzi and Dr. Sumrin Kalia. They talk about what has been done, and what should be done in response to catastrophic events such as the earthquakes that occurred in Turkey and Syria on February 6th, 2023.

Access the transcript

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Echoes of Gaza in the Global South Part 1

This episode, hosted byDr Mezna Qato, focuses on the recent emergent issues in Gaza, delving into the unfolding events and their broader impact, especially within the Global South.

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Echoes of Gaza in the Global South Part 2: Bosnia, Iran and Turkey

In this second episode on Gaza, we talk about how the events in Gaza are echoed in Bosnia, Iran and Turkey. 

About the project

TAKHAYYUL is a collaborative research project that will ethnographically excavate the imaginative forces in the formation of populist religious aspirations in the interconnected geographies recently coined as the Balkan-to-Bengal complex - namely the Balkans, the Middle East, and South Asia.

Such political aspirations provide its followers with a wide range of historical references, religious cosmologies, nationalist feelings and other affective and imaginative registers; this is best represented by the concept of takhayyul (a theory of imagination).

The Institute for Global Prosperity’s ERC-funded TAKHAYYUL project will develop an extensive and comparative formulation of the concept to set the basis for an anthropology of imagination and expand anthropological knowledge on religious politics by exploring the historical, ethical and aesthetic aspects. This project seeks to contribute to global prosperity by offering a fresh perspective that does not reproduce the tropes on irrationality. Instead, it is designed to provide a sound theoretical ground upon which to delineate the ways populist forms of religious politics forge imaginative landscapes beyond the borders of nation-states.

Project website: www.takhayyulproject.com
Project lead: Dr Sertaç Sehlikoglu

Art piece: Laurelie Rae, “the pandemic” made from 2020 to 2022, water colour and shell gold on paper 56cm x 76cm