Date: Friday, 30 October 2026

14.00 – 16.00 hrs. (CET) or 20.00-22.00 (Thai time)

In Buddhist-majority Thailand, divination is part of everyday life. Astrologers, palmists and tarot readers counsel clients of all backgrounds: students anxious about exams, office workers hoping for promotion, couples weighing the prospects of romance. They also advise political actors, from army generals planning coups d’etat to young protesters demanding democratic change. Yet divination practitioners rarely feature in scholarly accounts of Thailand. In this talk, Edoardo Siani presents his new book, Political Divinations. Drawing on over a decade of ethnographic
fieldwork, during which he also trained and practiced as a diviner, Siani moves between roadside fortune-telling markets in nocturnal Bangkok and elite circles where renowned seers serve the powerful. Bridging religious and political anthropology, he argues that cosmological knowledge long associated with a conservative order has become a resource through which citizens across the sociopolitical spectrum seek

About the lecturer:

Edoardo Siani (เอโด้) is assistant professor of Southeast Asian studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, research associate at the SOAS Centre of South East Asian Studies, and book review editor of South East Asia Research. He received his PhD in anthropology and sociology from SOAS University of London, while teaching at Thammasat University, and was later a postdoctoral researcher and then assistant professor at Kyoto University’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies. His book, Political Divinations, was first published in Thai as โหรา ประชาธิปไตย (Horaprachathipatai) bestseller at the 2026 National Book Fair in Bangkok.

Online Lecture via Zoom & in English

https://uni-hamburg.zoom.us/j/64563521222?pwd=OEdSbENCOUV2Ynl5ZUdnNG5mM1pwQT09

Meeting-ID: 645 6352 1222  ||  Passcode: hgtlecture