In Conversation: An OUP Podcast

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Episodes

Seeing China’s Belt and Road with Ed Schatz and Rachel Silvey

EPISODE SUMMARY: What becomes visible when you shift the lens away from Beijing to how China’s Belt and Road projects unfold on the ground? Seeing China’s Belt and Road, edited by Edward Schatz and Rachel Silvey, answers this question by reorienting conversations on China’s global infrastructure development to their “downstream” effects. Instead of analyzing the BRI through grand geopolitical narratives or a national strategic lens, the book draws on fieldwork across Asia, Africa, and Latin Amer...

Jul 09, 2025•54 min

Janet McIntosh, "Kill Talk: Language and Military Necropolitics" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Even casual observers of the military will notice the unique ways that service members use language. With all of the acronyms and jargon, some even argue that membership in the military requires learning a whole language. But rather than treat military-specific language as a cultural difference of the institution or a technical requirement for the job, Dr. Janet McIntosh examines how military language works to enable its members to both kill and imagine themselves as killable. In her book Kill T...

Jul 09, 2025•1 hr 28 min

Didi Kuo, "The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave and Why They Don't" (Oxford UP, 2025)

As the crisis of democratic capitalism sweeps the globe, The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave and Why They Don't (Oxford University Press, 2025) makes the controversial argument that what democracies require most are stronger political parties that serve as intermediaries between citizens and governments. Once a centralizing force of the democratic process, political parties have eroded over the past fifty years. Parties now rank among the most unpopular institutions in society...

Jul 04, 2025•53 min

Jennifer Crane, "'Gifted Children' in Britain and the World: Elitism and Equality Since 1945" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Who are 'gifted' children? In ‘Gifted Children’ in Britain and the World: Elitism and Equality since 1945 Jennifer Crane, a senior lecturer in the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol (Oxford UP, 2025) tells the social and cultural history of this category of young people. The book charts the individuals, organisations, policymakers, and media activities that aimed to identify children as ‘gifted’, lobbying for their social status and the potential benefit they might brin...

Jul 04, 2025•38 min

Richard K. Payne and Glen A. Hayes eds., "The Oxford Handbook of Tantric Studies" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Since the earliest encounters between tantric traditions and Western scholars of religion, tantra has posed a challenge. The representation of tantra, whether in Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Tibet, or Japan, has tended to emphasize the antinomian, decadent aspects, which, as attention-grabbing as they were for audiences in the West, created a one-dimensional understanding, and hampered the academic study of the field for more than a century. Additionally, the Western perspective on religion has been domi...

Jul 03, 2025•39 min

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