Objective
When the loudspeaker arrived in 1920s India, it amplified existing tensions between the region's Hindu, Muslim, and Christian communities, transgressed established social boundaries, and sparked new contests over the public soundscape.
LOUDSECULAR is the first sonic-sensory history of secularism in Kerala, India (1920-1960). Moving beyond political and textual histories, this project investigates how the loudspeaker reconfigured public space, religious authority, and community relations. It explores a globally relevant question: how do different religions, with their distinct ideas about sacred sound, negotiate their claims to the public soundscape? Using a methodological mix of archival research and oral history, the research recovers Kerala's soundscape from non-sonic colonial and national archives. It analyses disputes over temple festival broadcasts, the reach of church bells, and the timing of the Islamic call to prayer. This approach reframes secularism not as an abstract concept imported from the West, but as a tangible, lived, and sensory negotiation – a practice shaped on the ground by the interplay of technology, religion, and state power.
The project will be led by Dr Shahal Bilavinakath, a scholar with native Malayalam fluency, under the supervision of Prof. James Mansell at the University of Nottingham (UoN). The project is strategically centred at UoN, a world-leading hub for sound studies, to support multi-sited research across key colonial archives in the UK and India, and fieldwork in Kerala. The project will produce three key outputs: two journal articles on the sonic history of Indian secularism, a dataset of the loudspeaker's proliferation and regulation, and public sound installations in the UK and Kerala. For Dr Bilavinakath, this MSCA fellowship is the crucial step to becoming a leading voice on the sound cultures of South Asia, uniquely positioned to address urgent socio-technological questions from the perspective of the Global South.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- humanities history and archaeology history
- humanities philosophy, ethics and religion religions islam
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
NG7 2RD Nottingham
United Kingdom
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.