Project Title: 'Border Paar Muqaalmay’ - A podcast about socioecological challenges in the subcontinent
Project Team Members:
Marwah Maqbool Malik, PhD Student, Urban and Regional Planning
Vinisha Singh Basnet, PhD Candidate, Urban and Regional Planning
Project Description: Calls for decolonization ring loud among activists and scholars across the globe as the world descends into cascading crises, such as ecological collapse, brought on by capitalist and imperialist forces. These calls beckon a move towards better understanding local and indigenous knowledges, and ways of being to better prepare for and combat the crises we face. As scholars from the subcontinent, it is important to contextualize what these calls entail for the region. Given shared histories, cultural resonances and shared ecologies, there is fertile ground to foster cross-border conversations that deconstruct our shared socioecological challenges. Our project proposes to create such an interdisciplinary space to foster cross-border dialogues on local and indigenous ways of understanding socioecological challenges in the subcontinent. We situate ourselves as urban scholars from the subcontinent who work across the environment-ecology-climate change nexus.
We have a shared interest in understanding and centering diverse forms of knowledge(s) from our respective geographies (India and Pakistan). Hence, we believe we are uniquely positioned to lead the creation of a space that brings into conversation local and indigenous knowledges across national borders. Breaking away from traditional forms of knowledge generation and sharing, our project involves developing a podcast titled ‘Border Paar Muqaalmay’ which translates to “Cross-border Conversations.” For the duration of the grant, we propose to develop three episodes, with the intention to build on these as an ongoing project. The purpose of the podcast will be to engage in conversations about socioecological crises in the region drawing on local and indigenous perspectives and ways of being in the region. Our broader goal is to bring forth these Global South perspectives to a range of audiences. However, since the main audience is non-academic, the conversations will be conducted in a mix of Urdu and Hindi and kept jargon-free. We’ll also provide transcripts in English. Broad agendas for the three episodes include: 1. Introductory episode: Marwah and Vinisha will discuss the conceptual frameworks (decolonial methodologies and multiple epistemologies respectively) underlying the series and their importance 2. Episode 2 and 3: Conversation with scholars-activists from Pakistan and India to reflect on how indigenous and
local groups have been addressing changing socioecological conditions in their communities We’ll use podcast development tools at the Siebel Center of Design which are free to use for students.
We will also host a web page for the podcast on the Department of Urban Planning’s website to ensure our project has a permanent home. We will spend the first half of the grant period preparing background research for the podcast, finalizing speakers, and learning how to develop podcast episodes using the equipment in Siebel. We’ll use the remaining time to record, edit, and finalize the podcast episodes.