Desi Academia Podcast

S10E1: Desi Academia Podcast founders meet: Postdoc edition!

It's season 10 (Yes, we can't believe it either!) and the OG gang gets together after a long time to vent about all things academia.
In this episode of Desi "postdoctoral" podcast, we catch up with Aditya, talk about our lives post PhD and much more!

open.spotify.com/episode/50Uk...

S9E4: What is Islamic Studies? Wrong answers only, with Manan and Sumaira

✈️📚 Ever tried explaining your research to an immigration officer?
In this DAP episode, Manan & Sumaira join us to talk about trans-continental poetry, periodicals, studying Islamic communities and what exactly is Islamic studies!

open.spotify.com/episode/0p88...

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n

Any researchers or scholars thinking about Return to India should first try and post in support of our peers.

I mean, they operate in defiance of the law, and it is a civil (not criminal matter) right? I'm based out of the US, and I have not had any trouble using it...

But it would be nice to live in a world where these shitty paywallers did not exist.

💯

Have you ever wondered how an Islamic Studies scholar explains their research to an immigration officer?

Watch this space for our latest episode, where we find out more!

I would I would like to share this snippet from my dissertation's acknowledgements section. I cannot stress how IMPOSSIBLE academic success is in the Global South without disobedience.

Fuck academic paywalls forever.

Google Scholar Is Doomed Academia built entire careers on a free Google service with zero guarantees. What could go wrong?

Happy Friday.

hannahshelley.neocities.org/blog/2025_08...

There is something so ugly about a country desperate to claim a foreign prime minister or second lady as its own, while using its military might to displace and exile life-long residents.

There is no coming back from purging people's records and casting them out.
scroll.in/article/1085...

Supplementary Materials 6: Fighting for Research Integrity with India Research Watch

Link to episode: open.spotify.com/episode/6gOI...

It felt nearly impossible to make sense of all the dramatic changes and crises around us. But one thing helped: community.

Whether as a guest or a listener, you have been important to our doctoral journey. We hope that you continue to connect with us. 🫶
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Delighted to share that the Desi Academia Podcast is now the "Desi Postdoc Podcast, PhD"!
💪😎

We balanced this production with two dissertations, research projects, international relocations and a whole lot of paperwork.
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What does it take to fight against unethical behavior in research publishing?

Tune in to our latest discussion with the founder of India Research Watch, Achan Agarwal , in which we talk about his double career as an scientist and plagiarism sleuth.

Coming soon!

All retracted articles should immediately become open access.

‘AI doesn’t know what an orgasm sounds like’: audiobook actors grapple with the rise of robot narrators As demand for audio content grows, companies are looking for faster – and cheaper – ways to make it

This has to be the funniest first world problem:
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

#AcademicSky #SciPub #PeerReview #PhDSky #OpenScience #AcademicResearch #AcademicWriting #ScholarlyPublishing #AcademicPublishing #AcademicChatter 🧪

S9E3: Biology of human reproduction and endocrinology with Professor Deepak Modi Desi Academia Podcast · Episode

S9E3: To wrap up Pride Month 2025, join us as we sit down with Prof. Deepak Modi (@DeepakNModi ), an independent researcher at ICMR🧬🧪
From ‘organs on a chip’ to decoding molecular fertility pathways, he takes us deep into the science of human reproduction! open.spotify.com/episode/2wgv...

Indian scholars deserve better.

Making the constantly walk a tightrope between blatant exploitation and lack of opportunities is a reflection on our inability to give them value their contributions.

India’s retraction crisis casts shadow over science research The three pillars of any academic institution are education, research, and innovation. Education equips students with foundational knowledge, while innovation drives societal progress by turning ideas...

timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/voices...

What is vibe coding?

wrong answers only.

A poster for a play: "The Vanishing Act: A new cabaret about Earth's disappearing insects". On the right is a black and white ant in a top hat with one leg extended. Radiating from the finger are children's drawings of insect- bees, butterflies, beetles and so on.

In March we put on an insect cabaret show I developed with Cap-A-Pie Theatre about insects and the threats they face. We've now uploaded the songs and everyone can now see how brilliant the actors and song-writer were. Thread of songs below 👇🧪 #Insects #cabaret #theatre #scicomm #songs

Reminder: sci-comm and outreach costs money, and it’s being defunded across all STEM fields. It’s not just something scientists “do” (or fail to do, or need to do more).

I mean, most of us do “do” it on our own time too, but that will never be enough.

S9E2: Ethnography of masculinity and gender with Dr. Shannon Philip Desi Academia Podcast · Episode

S9E2: Megh, Harsha and Vatsal are joined by Dr Shannon Philip. He walks us through his academic journey and offers a masterclass on researching masculinity in the Global South. We dive into ethnography, patriarchy, feminism, and more…tune in now! open.spotify.com/episode/2vC0...

Previous season:
bsky.app/profile/desi...

Link to previous episodes:
bsky.app/profile/desi...

S9E1: Understanding boyhood, singleism, society and sexuality with Dr. Ketaki Chowkhani Desi Academia Podcast · Episode

It’s pride month 2025 and DAP is back with a new episode with @chowkhani
Join us in this riveting conversation where Dr. Chowkhani explains what is single studies or "singleism" and her research that attempts to understand boyhood, sexuality and society.

open.spotify.com/episode/3fab...

Small teaser of the things to come!
Interesting conversations, amazing people…stay tuned!!

📣📣Coming soon on Desi Academia Podcast!!

Very excited for the upcoming episodes of DAP focusing on research around gender and society.
Don’t forget to tune in for some sharp conversations and fresh perspectives!!

🎧🎙️new episode dropping soon! *Watch this space*