Global conversations with campus-radio patience.
SOAS Radio is a broad, talk-led station where academic interests meet lived experience. Its episodes move from First Nations hip-hop and Indigenous drag to yoga history, Muslim representation in fiction, and China-Australia sports diplomacy.
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SOAS Radio is less a single-format podcast than a wide station feed built around speech, music, research, and cultural exchange. Its centre of gravity is SOAS, University of London, but the conversations travel far beyond campus. Recent episodes linger in Australia, yoga studies, Islamic identities, China-Australia relations, and the politics of representation. The style is patient. It often starts with context, acknowledgement, and a clear statement of where the conversation is being held, then gives the guest enough time to build a full answer. The Movements and Sounds episodes are especially vivid. Charlotte speaks with First Nations artists and cultural workers about hip-hop, drag, sound, country, language, radio, climate justice, galleries, instruments, and the obligations around knowledge. Those conversations are not polished into fast radio. They keep the texture of a real exchange, including pauses, callbacks, uncertainty, and story-led explanation. That looseness works because the subjects benefit from room. A soundwalk through Redfern becomes a way to think about place, layered listening, urban memory, and what cannot be known all at once. A conversation with Yidinji moves from didgeridoo and family inheritance into gallery work, community art space, and the care attached to objects. Elsewhere, SOAS Radio turns more directly academic. Understanding Yoga Studies explains Indology through Sanskrit, hatha yoga texts, ethnography, and SOAS research projects. Radio Research Forum looks at Islamic identities, Muslim women in fiction, multiculturalism, Islamophobia, and collaboration between scholars and writers. Global Sports Conversations treats sport as a diplomatic and political field, with China-Australia relations framed through personal experience. The range can be broad, but the throughline is clear: people are asked to explain the worlds they know from the inside. This is radio for listeners who prefer context over speed and specificity over polish.
Made for: For listeners drawn to culture, music, politics, identity, and academic ideas without the stiffness of a lecture hall. It especially suits people who like long-form interviews where guests can think aloud.
What sets it apart: SOAS Radio stands out by placing university research beside community voices, artists, performers, and cultural workers. Its best episodes feel both local and international, grounded in specific places while asking larger questions about power, memory, and representation.
Independent Radio Station based at SOAS, University of London. Broadcasting music and speech content with a focus on Africa, Asia and the Middle East.London UK · For our full content, go to www.soasradio.org
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
SOAS Radio connects music and performance to place, community institutions, Indigenous identity and the practical work of sustaining culture.
SOAS Radio treats music as a route into place, community and cultural practice. In Movements & Sounds, facilitator Charlotte gives First Nations artists room to explain how creative work carries identity: Munkimuk connects hip-hop with language, education and community radio,…
This is where your queue moves from a Redfern soundwalk to AIDS activism without asking permission.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Monk's hip-hop work and Kori Radio history are the main throughlines in a purpose-led conversation.
SOAS Radio's Movements and Sounds presents Monk, also known as Monkey Muck, as a Sydney Kori Yawajali hip-hop artist whose work with Indigenous kids across Australia stays at the center of the piece.
A warm conversation about names, a treasured didgeridoo, and creating space for Indigenous artists.
This single-episode conversation with Yidinji moves easily through Aboriginal naming, music, visual art, and the practical work of giving Indigenous artists a place to show and sell their work.
A Redfern soundwalk that treats listening as a way of thinking about place, knowledge, and ceremony.
Movements and Sounds follows Luke Patterson, a Gamilaroi poet, folklorist and musician, as he walks through Redfern and turns the route into a close study of place.
A warm, self-possessed conversation about drag, makeup, and belonging.
Elle Beauty's conversation presents Indigenous drag as both performance and self-definition, grounded in her life as a First Nations drag queen in Western Sydney's Parramatta and her regular lip-sync work across the city.
A thoughtful conversation about VR, Indigenous cultural practice, and access across generations.
SOAS Radio's conversation with filmmaker and producer Dominic Allen frames Carribery as a project designed to travel across formats: VR headset, 45-minute full-dome version, interactive exhibition, and an online edition co-produced with the National Film and Sound Archive.
A steady conversation linking Indigenous hip-hop, radio, language, and community work.
Movements & Sounds frames hip-hop less as a genre than as lived cultural practice, with radio close behind as a form of community work. Charlotte's conversation with Monk, a Kori Yawajali hip-hop artist from Sydney, follows the lines that connect his music, visual art,…
Young campaigners bring the unfinished politics of HIV/AIDS into focus.
SOAS Radio's The World Made Easy keeps HIV/AIDS in the present tense, asking why a pandemic so often filed away as a 1970s and 1980s story still demands attention now.
Chicago critics DeRogatis and Kot pair new-album reviews with deep dives into records like Rumours.
Billboard's Keith Caulfield and Katie Atkinson break down the week's Hot 100 and 200 charts.
Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson trace viral internet stories from Reddit threads to courtrooms.
Chris Black and Jason Stewart riff on fashion, food, and celebrity culture three times weekly.
An interview exploring the folk arts and storytelling traditions of rural Bangladesh.
An academic discussion about Rahul Rao's book 'Out of Time: The Queer Politics of Postcoloniality', focusing on the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill and queer postcolonial theory.
An interview exploring sports diplomacy through the lens of China-Australia sports relations, featuring former professional volleyball player Andrew Hunter.
Host Josh interviews Georgie Wallis and Alex Causton-Ronaldson, campaigners with Youth Stop AIDS, a youth-led movement aiming to end AIDS by 2030.
Charlotte hosts Monk, a Koori hip-hop artist known as the grandfather of Indigenous hip-hop from Sydney.
Charlotte speaks with Monk, also known as Monkey Muck, on Movements and Sounds.
SOAS Radio's Movements and Sounds speaks with Yidinji, a Cairns-born Yidinji artist who lives in Canberra, runs Boundary Aboriginal Art Gallery, and plays didgeridoo.
Charlotte speaks with Elle Beauty, a First Nations drag queen based in Western Sydney’s Parramatta.
Charlotte takes a sound walk through Redfern with Luke Patterson.
SOAS Radio's Movements and Sounds interviews Dominic Allen about Carribery, a multi-platform project built around virtual reality, full-dome projection, and an interactive exhibition.
An academic interview exploring the discipline of Indology in relation to yoga studies with Dr.
An academic discussion on collaborative approaches to portraying Muslim women in fiction, featuring scholars and a novelist.