Unlocking Academia

Clavis Aurea
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Welcome to Unlocking Academia. A Clavis Aurea podcast that explores research in the humanities and social sciences through conversations with the scholars behind recently published books. In each episode, we speak with an author about their work, the ideas that shaped it, and the broader debates their research contributes to. Through these conversations, Unlocking Academia opens the door to academic scholarship and invites listeners to engage with the ideas, research, and intellectual discussions shaping fields such as history, literature, culture, politics, and the social sciences.

  1. Introducing Unlocking Academia with Tarin Ahmed

    SEASON 2, EPISODE 1 TRAILER

    Introducing Unlocking Academia with Tarin Ahmed

    Welcome to Unlocking Academia, a podcast from Clavis Aurea Podcasts. Unlocking Academia opens the door to the world of scholarship, inviting listeners to engage with the research and ideas driving today's intellectual conversations. In this upcoming season, we explore the latest research in the humanities and social sciences through conversations with the scholars behind recently published books. Each episode will bring you inside the ideas, inspirations, and debates that shape contemporary academic scholarship. Produced by the team at Clavis Aurea in the historic publishing city of Leiden, the podcast connects listeners with scholars and research shaping fields such as history, literature, and culture, and works with publishers worldwide to help academic voices reach wider audiences. For publishers, authors, and institutions interested in collaborating, or for individuals keen to host an episode, we encourage you to reach out via our Clavis Aurea social media channels or by contacting the team directly.

    1 min

  2. FEB 11

    Mikkel Krause Frantzen, "The Birth of the Financial Thriller" (Edinburgh University Press, 2025)

    In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, host Tarin Ahmed is joined by historian and cultural critic Mikkel Frantzen to explore his new book The Birth of a Financial Thriller: Making a Killing in the 1970s (Edinburgh University Press, 2025). Together they explore how the financial thriller genre emerged in the tumultuous economic climate of the 1970s and why its narrative strategies still shape how we imagine markets, risk and the drama of capital today. Frantzen guides us through the historical forces that gave rise to the genre, from the breakdown of Bretton Woods and oil crises to the rise of speculative finance and the globalisation of markets. Along the way, he shows how early works such as Paul Erdman’s The Billion Dollar Sure Thing set the template for novels where financial systems themselves become sites of mystery and suspense.  Drawing on literary analysis, economic history and cultural critique, the conversation unpacks key moments and texts that defined the genre, and considers how thrillers about markets both reflect and influence broader cultural understandings of power, uncertainty and crisis. Listeners will come away with a deeper appreciation of how fiction and finance have been entwined since the late twentieth century, and why the financial thriller continues to resonate in an era of ongoing economic upheaval.They explore how the financial thriller genre emerged in the tumultuous economic climate of the 1970s and why its narrative strategies still shape how we imagine markets, risk and the drama of capital today.

    59 min

  3. 12/05/2025

    Hind Elhinnawy, "Secular Muslim Feminism: An Alternative Voice in the War of Ideas" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025)

    In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, your host, Tarin Ahmed, is joined by guest Dr Hind Elhinnawy, a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Nottingham Trent University and co-director of the Critical Criminology and Social Justice Research Group. Discussing her book, Secular Muslim Feminism: An Alternative Voice in the War of Ideas (Bloomsbury 2024), they unpack the intellectual and personal motivations behind this work, tracing how over two decades of feminist activism and scholarship across the Middle East and Europe have informed Elhinnawy’s thinking.    Secular Muslim Feminism explores how simplistic narratives of oppression and empowerment obscure the lived complexities of Muslim women’s experiences, and how the selective celebration of religious agency can sometimes reinforce the very patriarchal structures feminism seeks to dismantle. The episode also examines how the language of women’s rights has been appropriated by far-right and Islamophobic actors, and what it means to actively resist that co-option.   At its core, Secular Muslim Feminism insists on a feminist politics that refuses easy alignment: one that will not be absorbed into Western liberal paternalism, nor constrained by conservative religious authority. This episode invites listeners behind the scenes of that argument, opening up the tensions, risks, and possibilities of staking out a feminist position that sits deliberately at the margins, yet speaks urgently to some of the most pressing debates of our time.

    47 min

  4. 09/02/2025

    Mutaz al-Khatib, "Key Classical Works on Islamic Ethics" (Brill, 2024)

    In this episode of Unlocking Academia, host Raja Aderdor speaks with Dr. Mutaz Al-Khatib, Associate Professor at the Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics and Director of the Master’s program in Applied Islamic Ethics at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. Together, they explore Key Classical Works on Islamic Ethics (Brill, 2024), a groundbreaking edited volume that brings together foundational texts spanning hadith, fiqh, kalam, Sufism, and Islamic medicine. Dr. Al-Khatib traces the intellectual lineage of Islamic ethical thought, highlighting how these texts offer practical guidance for lived moral practice while challenging dominant Greco-centric frameworks in ethical theory. The conversation delves into the interdisciplinary nature of Islamic ethics, its historical evolution, and why understanding ethics as a lived tradition remains vital in contemporary scholarship. Listeners will gain insight into the methods behind compiling and editing classical texts, the thematic threads that connect diverse genres, and the enduring relevance of Islamic ethical thought for scholars, students, and anyone interested in the intersections of religion, law, and philosophy. Lyrical, insightful, and rigorously scholarly, this episode invites audiences to engage with the rich, evolving tradition of Islamic ethics and consider its impact on both historical and modern contexts. We are Clavis Aurea: a dynamic team dedicated to advancing academic publishing and sharing groundbreaking scholarship with scholars, students, and enthusiasts worldwide. Based in the historic publishing hub of Leiden, we eat, sleep, and breathe publishing!

    26 min

  5. 06/28/2025

    Johanna Drucker, "Affluvia: the Toxic Off-Gassing of Affluent Culture" (Bridge Art, 2025)

    In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, Tarin Ahmed, the host, is joined by guest, Johanna Drucker,  an American author, book artist, visual theorist, and cultural critic. In a discussion on Drucker's recent publication, Affluvia: The Toxic Off-Gassing of Affluent Culture (Bridge Books, 2025), they cover topics of invisible labour, globalisation, sustainability and more.  Affluvia, a neologism for the “toxic off-gassing of affluent culture, explores the ecological costs of innocuous-seeming daily routines. Delving deeper into Drucker's own  ten minute morning routine, the book examines the lifecycle of production and consumption, revealing the ways these familiar objects are connected to complex networks of industrial production, extraction industries, human rights and labor issues, pollution of air and water, and destruction of human and animal habitat. The illustrated study breaks the coffee making and pet feeding into component parts, with each chapter focussing on one part of Drucker's routine. "Making Coffee" describes the lifecycle of beans from planting to roasting, the production of the coffee bag in which the beans are packaged and sold, the manufacture of the coffee grinder etc, whilst "Feeding the Cats" traces the cat food, the can and label, spoon, and bowls. Even the water, electricity, and waste products come under examination. The book is a vivid, dramatic, account of the environmental and social impact of ordinary everyday activities and is guaranteed to leave any reader with a newfound sense of curiosity for how our everyday objects came to be, and the impact getting to us has on our world.

    47 min

  6. 06/01/2025

    Basma Al Dajani, "The Arab Andalusian Love Poetry: A Study of the Interaction Between Place and Man Through Time" (AU Cairo Press, 1994)

    In this episode of Unlocking Academia, host Raja Aderdor speaks with Dr. Basma A. S. Dajani, Professor of Arabic Language and Literature, in a sweeping conversation on Arab-Andalusian love poetry and the cultural, linguistic, and emotional legacies it continues to inspire. Rooted in her 1994 book The Arab Andalusian Love Poetry: A Study of the Interaction Between Place and Man Through Time (AU Cairo Press, 1994), Dr. Dajani traces the origins of her research back to a formative journey to Granada in the early 1990s, where she was deeply influenced by the stories of Alhambra, her father the historian Ahmad Sidqi Dajani, and conversations with philosopher Roger Garaudy and Salma Taji. Drawing on decades of scholarship, she discusses her study of classical Arabic manuscripts, including Massare’ alUshaaq by Ja’far alSarraj, and reflects on the intersections of poetry, gender, geography, and intercultural dialogue. Together, they explore the themes of longing, nostalgia, and nature in the poetry of Al-Andalus; the contributions of women poets like Wallada bint al-Mustakfi; the influence of the Andalusian landscape on literary expression; and the enduring resonance of courtship poetry across time and cultures. Dr. Dajani also discusses the pedagogical value of teaching Andalusian texts today, the urgency of preserving classical Arabic manuscripts, and her vision for future research to spotlight overlooked voices in the tradition. Lyrical, insightful, and deeply rooted in lived and literary history, this episode offers a rare blend of academic depth and poetic beauty. We are Clavis Aurea: a dynamic team constantly looking for ways to help academic publishing grow and to promote groundbreaking publications to scholars, students, and enthusiasts globally. Based in the renowned publishing city of Leiden, we eat, sleep, and breathe publishing!

    34 min

  7. 05/10/2025

    William Jennings, "Dibia's World: Life on an Early Sugar Plantation" (Liverpool UP, 2023)

    In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, Tarin Ahmed, the host, is joined by guest, William Jennings, a senior lecturer in French at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, and author of Dibia's World.: Life on an Early Sugar Plantation (Liverpool UP, 2023). William discusses the importance of names, voice and the community life of a hundred slaves on an early sugar plantation. Dibia's World follows the story of Dibia, an educated man in Africa, stolen across the sea and sold into slavery. He spent the rest of his life on a sugar plantation, where he worked with Agoüya, drank Aboré's rum, married Izabelle and had a son named Paul. This book tells the story of the community he lived in with a hundred others in a colonial outpost of the Caribbean. It depicts the everyday life of enslaved Africans and Native Americans in remarkable detail, showing their names, relationships, skills, health and interactions, as they contended with and resisted their enslavement. Most studies of plantation life examine well-established colonies in the century before abolition.  This work provides a counterpoint by depicting the founding population of an African-American community in the early years of the industrial sugar plantation complex. Drawing on a planter's manuscript, shipping records, missionary accounts and seventeenth-century scraps of paper, Dibia's World will appeal to specialists as well as general readers interested in the early Atlantic world, Creole societies, slavery and African-American history.

    47 min

  8. 03/28/2025

    Marc Owen Jones, "Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation and Social Media" (Hurst/Oxford UP, 2021)

    In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, host Raja Aderdor sits down with Marc Owen Jones, associate professor at Northwestern University in Qatar, to explore the complex world of digital deception in the Middle East, as outlined in his book Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation and Social Media (Hurst/Oxford UP, 2021). Marc draws on years of experience growing up in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, as well as living and working in Sudan, Syria, Germany, and the UK. His perspective offers both depth and global context. In the episode, he discusses how social media has become a tool for manipulation, with bots, fake accounts, and disinformation campaigns shaping public discourse and limiting civil society. The conversation explores how these tactics function, their consequences, and the growing challenge of digital authoritarianism. Timely and insightful, this episode highlights the importance of understanding the role of digital technologies in shaping truth, politics, and media in the Middle East and beyond. We are Clavis Aurea: a dynamic team constantly looking for ways to help academic publishing grow and to promote groundbreaking publications to scholars, students, and enthusiasts globally. Based in the renowned publishing city of Leiden, we eat, sleep, and breathe publishing!

    25 min
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About

Welcome to Unlocking Academia. A Clavis Aurea podcast that explores research in the humanities and social sciences through conversations with the scholars behind recently published books. In each episode, we speak with an author about their work, the ideas that shaped it, and the broader debates their research contributes to. Through these conversations, Unlocking Academia opens the door to academic scholarship and invites listeners to engage with the ideas, research, and intellectual discussions shaping fields such as history, literature, culture, politics, and the social sciences.

Information

  • Creator
    Clavis Aurea
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    13
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Clavis Aurea
  • Show Website
    Unlocking Academia