About Me

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. My research and teaching revolve around globalization, cultural industries, new media and media convergence, and public culture. I am currently working on a book that provides a historical and critical account of ongoing changes in the media sector in Bombay and examines the operations of film, television, and dot-com companies as they grapple with the challenges of imagining “Bollywood” as a global cultural industry. My research also involves ethnographic work among fan communities that cohere around different aspects of film and television (for e.g., fans of A. R. Rahman, the TV show Indian Idol) in order to map the dynamics of participatory culture in South Asia and the South Asian diaspora. I have published articles on these topics in Biblio, International Journal of Cultural Studies, and Gazette: International Journal for Communication Studies, and co-edited an anthology of essays (Global Bollywood, NYU Press, 2008).

I serve as consulting researcher for the Convergence Culture Consortium at M.I.T. And I occasionally contribute to a food blog, Ahaar.