Highlander Journal

01/08/2025

Article Spotlight

Review of Habitat by Bashabi Fraser
Reviewer: Lynda Chouiten
Published in The Highlander Journal, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2025)

Habitat is a poetry collection about the planet. It moves between awe and warning. Some poems praise the natural world. Others confront exile, colonisation, and ecological destruction. The writing shifts between plain speech and dense metaphor. Sound, rhythm, and reference build each poem’s voice.

The review notes how form and urgency work together. Chouiten reads Fraser’s work as both witness and reflection. The poems ask where we belong—and what we are losing.

Read the full review here:
https://zenodo.org/records/16081571

Full issue available at the link in bio.

Cover image: Habitat by Bashabi Fraser

01/08/2025

Article Spotlight

Voices from the Releiki: A Study of Female Dormitory Institutions of the Zeme Nagas
by Yihingle Ndang

Published in The Highlander Journal, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2025)

What stories live in silence? What memories survive without monuments?

In this moving essay, Yihingle Ndang draws us into the releiki—female dormitories of the Zeme Nagas—spaces where young women once sang, worked, and formed bonds that shaped communal life. Through oral histories, personal recollections, and field research, Ndang brings back the erased voices of Zeme women and examines how their dormitories functioned as spaces of learning, resistance, and cultural transmission.

As dormitory institutions faded with war, Christianity, and colonial restructuring, so too did the visibility of women’s contributions to Zeme oral traditions. Yet in fragments—songs remembered at the hearth, memories of laughter and defiance—these voices continue to echo.

📷 Photo: A traditional Zeme dormitory in Peren Namgo village, Nagaland.
Image from the article, published under Creative Commons 4.0 (CC BY 4.0).

🔗 Read the full essay here:
https://zenodo.org/records/16080987

📰 Full issue via link in bio.

01/08/2025

Article Spotlight

Morphological Compounding: How Poetic Mongsen Constructs Meaning through Word Combinations
by Wapanginla Aier and Anish Koshy

Published in The Highlander Journal, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2025)

How do endangered poetic languages create meaning through sound, metaphor, and memory?

This study dives deep into Poetic Mongsen, a ceremonial register of the Ao language used in traditional songs and oral storytelling in Nagaland. Drawing on fieldwork across five villages, Aier and Koshy uncover how this lyrical form blends Mongsen and Chungli morphemes, metaphors, and uncommon compound structures to craft a distinctive poetic logic not found in everyday speech.

Their work reveals how even near-extinct linguistic forms remain richly generative — combining morphology and metaphor to encode worldview, memory, and art.

🔗 Read the full article here:
https://journals.highlanderpress.org/index.php/Highlander/article/view/42

📖 Full issue available via link in bio.

30/07/2025

Should / Could Norway buy Harvard?

Academic excellence has never been more affordable.

29/07/2025

🎧 Article Spotlight
“Rethinking the Past and Contextualising the Present: Reading Moko Koza’s ‘Boy from the Hills’” by Rhelo Kenye
📍Published in The Highlander Journal, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2025)

What happens when oral memory meets digital media?

In this powerful article, Rhelo Kenye explores Naga rapper Moko Koza’s Boy from the Hills as a reimagining of WWII history through the lens of contemporary folk-fusion rap. The song—and its striking music video—interweaves the story of the Japanese invasion of the Naga Hills with the voices of elders, including Koza’s own grandmother, to offer a grounded yet alternative way of understanding history and cultural identity.

🎙 Kenye shows how Koza’s artistic persona becomes a new kind of authorial voice: one that negotiates tradition, generational memory, and global aesthetics from the highlands.

🔗 Read the full article here:

https://journals.highlanderpress.org/index.php/Highlander/article/view/40/38

🖼 Slide through to see the article’s opening page.
📚 Full issue via link in bio.

25/07/2025

We are very pleased to share the latest issue of The Highlander Journal (Vol. 4, No. 1), a special issue edited by Dr Christian Poske, focusing on Naga performing arts and oral traditions.

The issue brings together thoughtful contributions from scholars based in India and Algeria, with pieces exploring poetic forms in Ao Naga songs, the role of Zeme women in sustaining oral traditions, musical storytelling that bridges generations, and diasporic reflections on ecological fragility.

Warm congratulations to Christian and all the contributors for their excellent work in bringing these themes to life. It’s a rich and timely collection, and we hope it finds wide and meaningful readership.

You can read the issue here: [Insert link]


www.highlanderjournal.org

14/09/2023

Fiquei muito feliz por finalmente ter essas pessoas incríveis em meu escritório. Agora começa o trabalho!

09/09/2023

This Wednesday, we had the immense privilege to host Prof Luiz Marques at the Mandela Auditorium, Centre for Peace Studies / Nedre Lysthus, UiT The Arctic University of Norway.

In a lecture titled “The Imminence of Crossing Tipping Points in the Amazon Rainforest: The Decisive Decade”, Prof Marques, from the State University of Campinas, Brazil (UNICAMP), graced us with his insights into the pressing issues facing the world's largest tropical rainforest - the Amazon.

Prof Marques tactfully navigated us through the current critical scenarios:

1. The possible surpassing of critical tipping points in the most degraded regions of the Amazon.
2. The precarious proximity of the healthier regions to this decisive threshold.

As we navigate this crucial decade, understanding the implications of these tipping points becomes vital for shaping informed decisions, not just at a regional level but also on a global scale. The health of the Amazon is intricately tied to the world's ecological equilibrium, making this a discussion of paramount importance.

Join us in this enlightening journey as we work together to grasp and address the pivotal challenges of our time. Your engagement is not just welcome, but necessary.