About Kenneth Bo Nielsen

I am a social anthropologist working on social movements and the political economy of development in India. In addition to working and teaching at the University of Oslo, I also manage the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies.

NBN Episodes hosted by Kenneth Bo:

India’s Waste Problem: A Discussion with Pamela Das

March 29, 2024

India’s Waste Problem

Pamela Das

How is India tackling its persistent wage management problems? And, are new infrastructural solutions the way forward? In this episode, Kenneth Bo Nie…

Amber Worlds: The Global Amber Trade in the China-Myanmar Borderlands

March 15, 2024

Amber Worlds

Alessandro Rippa

What role do China and other Asian countries play in the global amber trade? And, what can we learn about the big challenges of our time by studying a…

Who owns Khadi? From the Indian Freedom Struggle to an International Trademark

March 1, 2024

Who owns Khadi?

Subhadeep Chowdhury

Why did khadi become so central to India’s freedom struggle? How did it evolve into an international trademark – and what does khadi signify in India …

Life after NIAS: A Conversation on the Closure of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies

December 1, 2023

Life after NIAS

Listen:

In December 2023, more than five decades of institutionalized Nordic collaboration in the field of Asian studies will come to an end with the closure …

Understanding Narendra Modi: The Poetry of a Populist Leader

November 3, 2023

Understanding Narendra Modi

Why do politicians write poems? And what does a politician’s poetry tell us about their leadership? In this episode, a collective of researchers from …

Rahul Ranjan, "The Political Life of Memory: Birsa Munda in Contemporary India" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

September 22, 2023

The Political Life of Memory

Rahul Ranjan
Listen:

How do affective sites such as memorials and statues produce political visions, emotions, and opportunities? And how are they used strategically to fu…

India's Development Diplomacy and Soft Power in Africa

July 28, 2023

India's Development Diplomacy and Soft Power in Africa

Kenneth King and Meera Venkatachalam
Listen:

In this episode, Kenneth King (University of Edinburgh) & Meera Venkatachalam (University of Mumbai), discuss their recently co-edited volume, India's…

Hindu Nationalism and Lower Caste Politics

July 7, 2023

Hindu Nationalism and Lower Caste Politics

Samantha Agarwal
Listen:

Why and how has India’s Hindu nationalist party, the BJP, become so adept at appealing to and recruiting people from the lower castes? And what does t…

Afghanistan-Pakistan Relations: A Clash of Identities?

June 30, 2023

Afghanistan-Pakistan Relations

Farhat Taj

With Afghanistan once again under Taliban rule and Pakistan reeling under a severe economic and political crisis, the relationship between the neighbo…

The Politics of Community-Making in New Urban India

May 19, 2023

The Politics of Community-Making in New Urban India

Ritanjan Das and Nilotpal Kumar

How is urban India changing? And how do communities inhabit and transform India’s new cities and urban spaces? In this episode Kenneth Bo Nielsen is j…

Gender and Climate Change Adaptation in Bangladesh

March 31, 2023

Gender and Climate Change Adaptation in Bangladesh

Kathinka Fossum Evertsen

What does climate change adaptation look like in Bangladesh? And what kind of gendered social landscape does climate change adaptation have to navigat…

Arve Hansen, "Consumption and Vietnam’s New Middle Classes: Societal Transformations and Everyday Life" (Springer, 2022)

March 10, 2023

Consumption and Vietnam’s New Middle Classes

Arve Hansen

In this episode, we discuss Arve Hansen’s new book Consumption and Vietnam’s New Middle Classes: Societal Transformations and Everyday Life (Springer,…

Hindu Nationalism and the Politics of Lord Parshuram

December 30, 2022

Hindu Nationalism and the Politics of Lord Parshuram

Solano da Silva and Jigisha Bhattacharya

In this episode, we focus the use of religious myths, icons and deities in Hindu nationalist politics in India. More specifically, we discuss the poli…

The Assassination and Legacy of Shinzo Abe

November 25, 2022

The Assassination and Legacy of Shinzo Abe

Paul Midford

The brutal assassination of Prime Minister Abe in July this year shocked Japan and has produced large and unexpected consequences for the nation´s pol…

Political Deification in South Asia

October 28, 2022

Political Deification in South Asia

Moumita Sen, Michael Stausberg, Praskanva Sinharay and Sharika Thiranagama

How can we understand the processes through which political leaders, god-men, stars of all kinds, and big or small deities mingle together in the publ…

Transcendence and Sustainability: Asian Visions with Global Promise

September 16, 2022

Transcendence and Sustainability

Mette Halskov, Amita Baviskar, and Lu Chen

Can spiritually and religiously inspired environmental movements in Asia help reach the global goal of environmental sustainability? This question lie…

Podcasting Academic Research: A Chat about the Nordic Asia Podcast

August 12, 2022

Podcasting Academic Research

What is the potential of podcasts to disseminate research based insights? How can a podcast function as a networking and pedagogical tool? And what is…

What Happened to the Farm Law Movement?

June 10, 2022

What Happened to the Farm Law Movement?

Amandeep Sandhu

The prolonged farmers' protests that unfolded in India in 2020-2021 undoubtedly represents the most significant and successful farmers’ movement in th…

The “Post-Abe” era, Japan under Fumio Kishida with Paul Midford

May 23, 2022

The “Post-Abe” era, Japan under Fumio Kishida

Paul Midford

Does Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida´s new administration represent the true beginning of the “Post-Abe” era for Japan? After the one-year trans…

India’s Ukrainian Dilemma

April 11, 2022

India’s Ukrainian Dilemma

Ravinder Kaur, Henrik Chetan Aspengren and Sunniva Engh

The Russian war in Ukraine has placed India in a difficult situation: how to retain the historically good relationship with Russia, without jeopardizi…

Arild Engelsen Ruud and Mubashar Hasan, "Masks of Authoritarianism: Hegemony, Power and Public Life in Bangladesh" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)

April 1, 2022

Masks of Authoritarianism

Arild Engelsen Ruud and Mubashar Hasan

Bangladesh has turned into a hybrid regime with an increasingly authoritarian culture that silences critics and oppositions in many brutal ways. How d…

Democratic Backsliding in Sri Lanka

March 18, 2022

Democratic Backsliding in Sri Lanka

Øivind Fuglerud

Cocktail umbrellas and refugee camps, serene Buddhist monasteries and soldiers in combat fatigues – Sri Lanka is a country of paradoxes. When the coun…

India's Five State Elections and their Implications

March 14, 2022

India's Five State Elections and their Implications

Arild Ruud, Guro Samuelsen, Edward Moon-Little, Rahul Ranjan and Shreya Sinha

The past few months have been election season in India. Although these are state elections, many view them as a key midterm evaluation of Prime Minist…

Mythopolitics in South Asia

February 25, 2022

Mythopolitics in South Asia

Moumita Sen, Silje L. Einarsen, The’ang Theron and Guro W. Samuelsen

India has been caught in a question for almost a decade now: is it a secular democracy or is it a Hindu nation? The struggles over this question goes …