Tell us about your career.
I am an Assistant Professor of Communication at the School of Management, Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, India, working broadly in community and alternative media, communication for development and social change, and critical media studies. My doctoral work at the University of Hyderabad explored community radio, culture, and identity formation in rural India.
In addition, I serve as Co-Vice Chair of the Participatory Communication Research Section at the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), where my work engages with global debates on communication, participation, and social change.
Why did you apply for the Charles Wallace India Trust Visiting Fellowship?
The Charles Wallace India Trust Visiting Fellowship offers a unique opportunity to engage deeply with arts and humanities scholarship in an international setting while advancing a focused research project. I was particularly drawn to its emphasis on supporting early- to mid-career scholars working at the intersection of culture, society, and critical inquiry.
For my work on listening and community media, the fellowship provides an invaluable space to refine conceptual frameworks, engage with diverse academic perspectives, and situate my research within broader global conversations.
What will you be doing during the fellowship?
I will be developing my project, “Voices We Hear, Cities We Build: Listening and the Everyday Politics of Migrants in Urban India.” The project examines listening as a political and relational practice within community radio, focusing on how migrant communities in urban India negotiate belonging and everyday citizenship.
Drawing on fieldwork with Gurgaon Ki Awaaz, it seeks to rethink the public sphere by shifting attention from voice to the conditions under which marginalised groups are heard.
How will this project impact communities?
This project aims to contribute to how we understand and support communicative inclusion, particularly for migrant communities whose voices are often present but not always recognised. By focusing on listening rather than only expression, it highlights how media spaces can foster forms of recognition, belonging, and civic orientation even when direct participation is limited.
In practical terms, the research can inform how community media organisations design their programming and engagement strategies to be more responsive to the lived realities of marginalised groups, especially those navigating precarious work and social conditions. It also has implications for policymakers and practitioners by demonstrating that meaningful inclusion is not only about enabling people to speak, but also about creating the conditions under which they are heard.
What attracted you to King's?
King’s College London offers a vibrant intellectual environment, especially through the Global Cultures Institute, where interdisciplinary engagement is central. What attracted me most was the opportunity to situate my work within conversations that cut across media, culture, urban studies, and global inequalities.
The fellowship provides time, space, and institutional support to think more deeply about the research, while also enabling meaningful academic exchange through seminars, workshops, and collaborations. Being at King’s allows me to connect my work on community media in India with wider debates on cities, migration, and cultural production, which significantly enriches the project.
After working on this project at King’s, what do you hope to do with the research in the future?
Following the fellowship, I hope to develop this work into a series of academic publications and a broader research agenda on listening, media infrastructures, and urban publics. I am particularly interested in extending the project comparatively across different urban contexts to understand how listening operates in varied socio-cultural and institutional environments.
In addition, I aim to translate some of these insights into more accessible formats, including policy-oriented writing and collaborations with community media practitioners. Ultimately, the goal is to contribute both to scholarly debates and to grounded interventions that strengthen communicative practices on the ground.