In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, your host, Tarin Ahmed, is joined by guest Dr Hind Elhinnawy, a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Nottingham Trent University and co-director of the Critical Criminology and Social Justice Research Group. Discussing her book, Secular Muslim Feminism: An Alternative Voice in the War of Ideas (Bloomsbury 2024), they unpack the intellectual and personal motivations behind this work, tracing how over two decades of feminist activism and scholarship across the Middle East and Europe have informed Elhinnawy’s thinking.

Secular Muslim Feminism explores how simplistic narratives of oppression and empowerment obscure the lived complexities of Muslim women’s experiences, and how the selective celebration of religious agency can sometimes reinforce the very patriarchal structures feminism seeks to dismantle. The episode also examines how the language of women’s rights has been appropriated by far-right and Islamophobic actors, and what it means to actively resist that co-option.

At its core, Secular Muslim Feminism insists on a feminist politics that refuses easy alignment: one that will not be absorbed into Western liberal paternalism, nor constrained by conservative religious authority. This episode invites listeners behind the scenes of that argument, opening up the tensions, risks, and possibilities of staking out a feminist position that sits deliberately at the margins, yet speaks urgently to some of the most pressing debates of our time.

In this episode of Unlocking Academia, host Raja Aderdor speaks with Dr. Mutaz Al-Khatib, Associate Professor at the Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics and Director of the Master’s program in Applied Islamic Ethics at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. Together, they explore Key Classical Works on Islamic Ethics (Brill, 2024), a groundbreaking edited volume that brings together foundational texts spanning hadith, fiqh, kalam, Sufism, and Islamic medicine.

Dr. Al-Khatib traces the intellectual lineage of Islamic ethical thought, highlighting how these texts offer practical guidance for lived moral practice while challenging dominant Greco-centric frameworks in ethical theory. The conversation delves into the interdisciplinary nature of Islamic ethics, its historical evolution, and why understanding ethics as a lived tradition remains vital in contemporary scholarship.

Listeners will gain insight into the methods behind compiling and editing classical texts, the thematic threads that connect diverse genres, and the enduring relevance of Islamic ethical thought for scholars, students, and anyone interested in the intersections of religion, law, and philosophy.

Lyrical, insightful, and rigorously scholarly, this episode invites audiences to engage with the rich, evolving tradition of Islamic ethics and consider its impact on both historical and modern contexts.

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In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, Tarin Ahmed, the host, is joined by guest, Johanna Drucker, an American author, book artist, visual theorist, and cultural critic. In a discussion on Drucker's recent publication, Affluvia: The Toxic Off-Gassing of Affluent Culture (Bridge Books, 2025), they cover topics of invisible labour, globalisation, sustainability and more.

Affluvia, a neologism for the “toxic off-gassing of affluent culture, explores the ecological costs of innocuous-seeming daily routines. Delving deeper into Drucker's own ten minute morning routine, the book examines the lifecycle of production and consumption, revealing the ways these familiar objects are connected to complex networks of industrial production, extraction industries, human rights and labor issues, pollution of air and water, and destruction of human and animal habitat.

The illustrated study breaks the coffee making and pet feeding into component parts, with each chapter focussing on one part of Drucker's routine. "Making Coffee" describes the lifecycle of beans from planting to roasting, the production of the coffee bag in which the beans are packaged and sold, the manufacture of the coffee grinder etc, whilst "Feeding the Cats" traces the cat food, the can and label, spoon, and bowls. Even the water, electricity, and waste products come under examination.

The book is a vivid, dramatic, account of the environmental and social impact of ordinary everyday activities and is guaranteed to leave any reader with a newfound sense of curiosity for how our everyday objects came to be, and the impact getting to us has on our world.