RAS Lecture series 2024-25

Detail of Buddha image in carved into the rock face in mahāparinibbāṇa on the Phu Wiang Mountain range, Chaiyaphum province, Thailand. Late 8th to early 9th century. Author’s photograph. The Khorat Plateau is a landscape of some 155,000 square kilometres of what is now northeast Thailand and central Laos. Despite the rich evidence for the…

  The South Asia Collection Museum in Norwich,UK has over 250 vernacular furniture items and related objects from north-west India. When it came to representing these objects, available research was scarce. Emerging from this museological need of contextualising the collection, a collaborative project, ‘Vernacular Furniture of North-West India’ was conducted with the Design Innovation and…

The talk will go though some of the pivotal moments in my book just released from Cambridge University Press. Through the India-China Border: Kalimpong in the Himalayas mobilizes rarely used documentary material from British, Chinese and Indian archives to shed new light on our understanding of the 'Tibet Question' in China-India relations. Focused on the Himalayan…

Please note that this event has been postponed. We will let you know when a new date has been scheduled.  

  From September 2024 to February 2025, the Silk Roads get a spotlight in London, with two concurrent exhibitions on this topic at the British Museum and the British Library. The British Museum exhibition Silk Roads takes audiences on a journey across Asia, Africa and Europe, exploring the movement of people, objects and ideas in…

  This talk will introduce The Cambridge History of Confucianism, Volume I (pre-history-1400), the editing of which Prof Paramore is currently completing with publication expected in early 2026. Confucianism has been a major force in the cultural history of China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam for thousands of years, affecting the art, literature, science and politics…

  Andrew Laurie grew up in Shropshire, spent a lot of his childhood watching animals, and studied biology at the University of Cambridge, doing research on hippos in Tanzania, starfish in Sudan, and rhinos in Nepal, India and south-east Asia.   After a seven year research fellowship studying Marine Iguanas in the Galapagos Islands he…

While dress code in medieval societies was largely defined by religious, political, and social rules, personal preferences could still play a significant role in shaping dress culture. Focused on Mamluk Cairo, this lecture documents the involvement of sultans and emirs in the design of uniforms and ceremonial outfits to convey their political image, while at…