finally, another person who looks at Matt Damon and thinks of Leonardo di Caprio! An Uncomplicated Man www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Emily Wilson · An Uncomplicated Man

As they say at the awards shows, I was humbled to learn that Christopher Nolan has read at least the first line of my...

lrb.co.uk

if you're in Glasgow next weekend, I'll be speaking at the Govanhill Book Festival – the programme for which features lots of brilliant speakers including the one and only Jeremy Corbyn! govanhillbaths.com/what-we-do/g...

Govanhill Book Festival - Govanhill Baths

Two days of literature, politics and ideas at the heart of the Govanhill International Festival. Featuring Jeremy Corbyn, Josie Long, Rahul Rao, Frances Crawford, Hannah Lavery and more. Tickets from ...

govanhillbaths.com

“Just because it’s easy to demonise Infantino doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t” 😂 (If you read one thing about the World Cup) www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Simon Skinner · ‘I wouldn’t pay it either’: World Cup Wallcharts

Infantino, who once pronounced that ‘it’s very clear that politics should stay out of football and football should...

lrb.co.uk

JOB 📣 Lecturer in International Political Economy in the School of IR, University of St Andrews www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

just released: new podcast on 'The Psychic Lives of Statues' with Gargi Bhattacharyya – we recorded this conversation several months ago, and it ended up fuelling some of my thinking for the new preface to the paperback shows.acast.com/ucl-sarah-pa...

SPRC In conversation with Rahul Rao: Statues, idols and why we love the idea of an animate object | UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre Podcast

shows.acast.com

Rahul Rao@rahulraothariel.bsky.social · 4mo ago

the paperback edition of ‘The Psychic Lives of Statues’ is out in June 2026, with a new preface describing how India anticipated the fascination that authoritarian strongmen and tech bros have with immortalizing their ideals and idols in statues preorder here: www.plutobooks.com/product/the-...

loved having this wide-ranging conversation with Timothy Stacey and Annick van Rinsum on living in a more-than-human world

Room to explore... living in a more than human world

NIAS — Room to explore · Episode

open.spotify.com

'the task facing a mature society is to adapt its methods of financing universities to sustaining the purposes for which such institutions exist'

Stefan Collini · Squadrons of Pigs: Bonfire of the Universities

The problems with Britain’s universities are systemic and deep-rooted, not just local or contingent. Yet political and...

lrb.co.uk

Also some excellent reflections on this in @rahulraothariel.bsky.social 's the psychic lives of statues.

Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 2mo ago

But also many Indian elites had historically been complicit in the British empire and profited of it. Our histories are not simple stories of colonization and resistance but also of collaboration and profit. Third, Indian tech elites are generally educated without any training in the humanities…/

1. Caste. Most people in the west don’t understand that the waves of engineers and doctors who immigrated out of India in the 70s and onwards were ‘high’ caste folks, who resented the Indian equivalent of affirmative action for caste. Caste solidarity is very powerful…/

theklittle@kdiddy.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Can anyone explain that to me? How and why do they support them? I’ve never been able to figure that out as a non racist white guy.

Academic departments deserve to be saved, supported, resourced, allowed to grow even if they're not "best in the country," "first in the REF," "top-ranked," "at a Russell Group uni," or whatever other austerity-brained nonsense senior managers have been using to flimflam you out of solidarity

Drawing History www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

Drawing History

history.ac.uk

a short commentary from me responding to Andrew Smith's ‘What post-colonial sociology forgets: Recovering the materialist tradition of anti-colonial critique’ in Dialogues in Sociology doi.org/10.1177/2976...

made a list of my favourite books about the politics of statues, all of which informed the writing of 'The Psychic Lives of Statues' bookdna.com/best-books/t...

Rahul Rao's favorite books about the politics of controversial statues

Rahul Rao wrote The Psychic Lives of Statues. These are their favorite books on the politics of controversial statues.

bookdna.com

enjoyed talking to Lalita du Perron on SASSpod about ‘The Psychic Lives of Statues’, the world it was written in, and the state we’re in now

The Psychic Lives of Statues

Quickly and easily listen to SASSpod for free!

player.captivate.fm

glad to see OfS ‘free speech’ crusaders with egg on their face

Sussex University overturns £585,000 fine as high court rejects free speech breach claim

Ruling is blow to Office for Students after it issued record fine for allegations over professor’s trans rights views

theguardian.com

Sunil Kashyap: "The UGC regulations and the Supreme Court injunction capture the essence of the tightrope the BJP is walking: to announce measures to show Bahujan communities that it has their interests at heart, while not enforcing them in order to avoid alienating its loyal upper-caste base."

UGC’s equity regulations test BJP's Hindutva social arithmetic ahead of UP elections

The protests, both in support and against the UGC regulations, which were stayed by the Supreme Court, bring to fore the delicate caste equation that the BJP needs to manage to ensure electoral succes...

caravanmagazine.in

“Rich theoretical intervention in a debate that is impossible to avoid: these statues, after all, occupy public space and cannot easily be ignored” The Psychic Lives of Statues by @rahulraothariel.bsky.social reviewed in The Wire India: m.thewire.in/article/book...

Reading Gandhis Afterlives in an Age of Toppling Statues - The Wire

A new book explores the global politics of statues and memory, placing Gandhi at the centre of debates on race, caste and postcolonial history.

m.thewire.in

“Rich theoretical intervention in a debate that is impossible to avoid: these statues, after all, occupy public space and cannot easily be ignored” The Psychic Lives of Statues by @rahulraothariel.bsky.social reviewed in The Wire India: m.thewire.in/article/book...

Reading Gandhis Afterlives in an Age of Toppling Statues - The Wire

A new book explores the global politics of statues and memory, placing Gandhi at the centre of debates on race, caste and postcolonial history.

m.thewire.in

“Experts say the algorithm failed to take into account key cultural issues, including that there is no standard form of transcribing Bengali names into English script, and that Bengali surnames have been adapted over generations, leading to small spelling inconsistencies between family documents.”

Millions in India stripped of vote before critical state election, as government seeks to ‘purify’ electoral roll

Experts say Muslims and other minorities have been disproportionately deleted from the electoral roll ahead of the West Bengal elections this week

theguardian.com

“Rich theoretical intervention in a debate that is impossible to avoid: these statues, after all, occupy public space and cannot easily be ignored” The Psychic Lives of Statues by @rahulraothariel.bsky.social reviewed in The Wire India: m.thewire.in/article/book...

Reading Gandhis Afterlives in an Age of Toppling Statues - The Wire

A new book explores the global politics of statues and memory, placing Gandhi at the centre of debates on race, caste and postcolonial history.

m.thewire.in

If you're close to Edinburgh highly recommend the Writing as Resistance exhibit at the Palestine museum.

the paperback edition of ‘The Psychic Lives of Statues’ is out in June 2026, with a new preface describing how India anticipated the fascination that authoritarian strongmen and tech bros have with immortalizing their ideals and idols in statues preorder here: www.plutobooks.com/product/the-...

"when did they put us in Madame Tussauds?"

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 4mo ago

King Charles is due to visit Donald Trump. Here are the questions he needs to ask himself first | Zoe Williams

i learned so much about the city I'm from by reading Hemangini Gupta's wonderful book 'Experimental Times: Startup Capitalism and Feminist Futures in India' (University of California Press, 2024)

Book Forum: Rahul Rao on Hemangini Gupta's Experimental Times | GENDER.ED

Earlier this year, GENDER.ED, CRITIQUE and the Critical Data Studies Cluster of EFI hosted a book launch for Hemangini Gupta’s new book Experimental Times. In this blog post, Dr Rahul Rao engages with...

gender.ed.ac.uk

if, like me, you’ve been feeling AI illiterate, consider spending two very worthwhile hours listening to @nsrnicek.bsky.social talk about what the hell is going on

Silicon Empires w/ Nick Srnicek

Podcast Episode · The Dig · 26 January · 2h 24m

podcasts.apple.com

all these universities kept axing medieval history departments as if they thought tyrants beefing with the Pope was going to stop being relevant

when charismatic species are in danger of extinction, you know we’re truly fucked

Mass drowning of chicks puts emperor penguins at risk of extinction

Record low levels of Antarctic sea ice are having grim consequences for penguins yet to grow waterproof feathers

theguardian.com

🚨NEXT EVENT🚨 📖 Book talk: ‘The psychic lives of statues: reckoning with the rubble of empire’ Discussion of Rahul Rao’s (@rahulraothariel.bsky.social) latest book 🗓️ Monday 20 April, 4pm BST (online) 🔗Register here: www.bisa.ac.uk/members/work...

Book talk - The psychic lives of statues: reckoning with the rubble of empire- Emotions in Politics and International Relations (EPIR) | BISA

- Emotions in Politics and International Relations (EPIR) Working Group

bisa.ac.uk

a wonderful bracingly critical review by Arko Dasgupta of 'The Psychic Lives of Statues' in @thewire.in - so grateful for this thoughtful engagement with the book in one of my favourite corners of independent media

Reading Gandhi's Afterlives in an Age of Toppling Statues

A new book explores the global politics of statues and memory, placing Gandhi at the centre of debates on race, caste and postcolonial history.

thewire.in

if you work in a UK uni, drop everything and read this (not news to many of us, but sobering to have the dots joined up; the stories are outrageous and heartbreaking)

‘I see it as trafficking’: the brutal reality of life as a foreign student in the UK

The long read: Universities in Britain rely on overseas applicants paying full fees, which has given rise to some unscrupulous recruiters and left many hopefuls and their families deep in debt

theguardian.com