The Team
Ashvin Devasundaram
Principal Investigator, London
Dr Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram is Reader in Global Cinemas at Queen Mary University of London. He is author of India's New Independent Cinema: Rise of the Hybrid (Routledge, 2016), Indian Cinema Beyond Bollywood: The New Independent Cinema Revolution (Routledge, 2018) and Indian Indies: A Guide to New Independent Indian Cinema (with a foreword by Shabana Azmi) (Routledge, 2022) - the world's first books on new Indian Indie films, establishing a distinct research area in Indian cinema studies. He has also co-edited the anthology South Asian Diasporic Cinema and Theatre: Re-visiting Screen and Stage in the New Millennium (Rawat Publications, 2017) and contributed the foreword to The Routledge Handbook of Indian Indie Cinema (2025). He was on the advisory panel for BFI India on Film - part of the UK-India Year of Culture 2017, spearheaded by the BFI, British Council, Arts Council England and the Indian High Commission. He created the first UK university teaching module on new independent Indian cinema at Queen Mary University in 2017-18. Ashvin is Associate Director of the UK Asian Film Festival (UKAFF), and as creative director of the UK Heritage Lottery-funded Memories Through Cinema research project (2017-18) directed the documentary Movies, Memories, Magic (2018), which screened across the UK, South Africa, India and Singapore, and won a Queen Mary University Community Engagement Prize in 2018. Ashvin is currently co-editing the anthology Urban Violence and Marginalised Communities: Multidisciplinary Interpretations (to be published by UCL Press in 2025). He is Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded research project ‘Connecting Creative Industries and Cultural Heritage: India-UK Film Festival Federation, Youth Curation and Community Co-Creation’ (2024-27).
Veena Hariharan
Co-Investigator, New Delhi
Veena Hariharan is an Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her essays and articles on documentary, non-fiction cinema and the environment have appeared in journals and edited volumes. Most recently, she was Alexander Von Humboldt Fellow at Goethe University, Frankfurt (2022-24) where she worked on non-human-human entanglements in cinema and new media. She is currently completing a book manuscript on Indian non-fiction cinema. Veenahas also served in various capacities for film festivals including IFFK (Indian Film Festival of Kerala), Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA), 3rd I Film Festival San Francisco, and the Habitat Film Club.
Harmanpreet Kaur
Co-Investigator, Mumbai
Harmanpreet Kaur is an Assistant Professor at the School of Media and
Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She
earned her Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from the School of Arts and
Aesthetics, JNU, New Delhi. Her doctoral research analyses and charts
the journey of alternative films in India from their aesthetics to
infrastructures of production, distribution and exhibition from 2007
to 2019. She has earlier worked as a producer of children's short
fiction films in Mumbai and a broadcast journalist with Network18 in
New Delhi. Her work has been published in Bioscope: South Asian Screen
Studies and Studies in South Asian Film and Media.
Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She
earned her Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from the School of Arts and
Aesthetics, JNU, New Delhi. Her doctoral research analyses and charts
the journey of alternative films in India from their aesthetics to
infrastructures of production, distribution and exhibition from 2007
to 2019. She has earlier worked as a producer of children's short
fiction films in Mumbai and a broadcast journalist with Network18 in
New Delhi. Her work has been published in Bioscope: South Asian Screen
Studies and Studies in South Asian Film and Media.
Shenjuti Dutta
Co-Investigator, Kolkata
Dr. Shenjuti Dutta is an assistant professor in the Department of Film Studies, St. Xavier's College Kolkata. She also regularly takes classes in the Department of Mass Communication and Videography of the same institution. After completing her graduation with honours in English, she completed her Masters in Film Studies, followed by an M.Phil. and a Ph.D. from the School of Women's Studies, Jadavpur University. Her M.Phil. dissertation was on the historical notion of 'heroine' of Bengali cinema of 1940s-60s and its origin in classical literature and visual culture. Her Ph.D. thesis is titled "Her Face: Close-Up, Affection-Image and Alterity." Her areas of interest include feminism, film philosophy, film theory, gender and cinema. She received a one-year intramural research grant from St. Xavier's College Kolkata in September 2023. From 2014 to 2019, Shenjuti served on the Kolkata International Film Festival's selection committee, and in 2013, she served as one of the NETPAC jury members of the festival. She has translated a couple of canonical essays in Film Studies from English to Bengali. She publishes both in English and Bengali. Shenjuti is also a fiction writer and has authored two graphic narratives in Bengali.
Santosh Kumar
Co-Investigator, Bengaluru
Dr. Santosh Kumar earned his PhD in Linguistics from the Department of Linguistics, Delhi University, New Delhi. With the support of a Junior Research Fellowship and a Senior Research Fellowship conferred by the University Grants Commission, GoI; he completed his doctoral research titled A Sociolinguistic Study of Stereotypes, Prejudices and Discrimination of Gender and Disability in Talk and Text (2018). He earned his MPhil and MA in Linguistics from Delhi University, his MPhil dissertation, ‘J. B. Gilchrist’s A Grammar of Hindoostanee Language: Some Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Aspects’ explores the colonial and contemporary imprints in one of the earliest grammars of Hindi. His research interests are Critical Disability Studies, Cultural Studies, Sociolinguistics, and Applied Linguistics. He is interested in exploring the usage of language and metaphors to represent a disability and other marginalised sections of society in popular culture, media, literature, and language. He has published his articles in Indian Linguistics (Linguistics Society of India); Economic and Political Weekly, and Anthropology News (American Anthropological Association, USA). I have contributed chapters titled “Language Teaching in Inclusive Education” in Trends of Language Teaching (2017), edited by R K Agnihotri et. al. (Orient Blackswan) and “Metaphors Goes Far: Materiality as Metaphor” in Disability in South Asia: Knowledge and Experience (2018) edited by Anita Ghai from (Sage Publication).
Since 2017, he has been an integral part of Christ University, Bangalore. Previously, he has taught at the National Institute of Technology, Delhi (2016); Galgotia College of Engineering & Technology, Greater Noida, UP (2008-10); Non-Collegiate Women’s Education Board and School of Open Learning, University of Delhi. The academic journey to University teaching and research reaffirms his desire to create interdisciplinary studies in Cultural Studies, Linguistics, and Critical Disability Studies for liberal education.
He is one of the co-investigators of a project on Connecting Creative Industries and Cultural Heritage: India-UK Film Festival Federation, Youth Curation and Community Co-creation spearheaded by Dr. Ashvin Devasundaram, Principal Investigator, Queen Mary University of London awarded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) under UKRI for 36 Months from October 2024.
Extending his professional services to the wider field, he serves on the editorial board of Disability and Society, (Taylor & Francis), and is the review editor of the Indian Journal of Critical Disability Studies, Open Access Journal (curated by Critical Disability Studies in India, New Delhi). He is also a member of the International Paremiological Association, Tavira, Portugal, and the Linguistics Society of India.
Since 2017, he has been an integral part of Christ University, Bangalore. Previously, he has taught at the National Institute of Technology, Delhi (2016); Galgotia College of Engineering & Technology, Greater Noida, UP (2008-10); Non-Collegiate Women’s Education Board and School of Open Learning, University of Delhi. The academic journey to University teaching and research reaffirms his desire to create interdisciplinary studies in Cultural Studies, Linguistics, and Critical Disability Studies for liberal education.
He is one of the co-investigators of a project on Connecting Creative Industries and Cultural Heritage: India-UK Film Festival Federation, Youth Curation and Community Co-creation spearheaded by Dr. Ashvin Devasundaram, Principal Investigator, Queen Mary University of London awarded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) under UKRI for 36 Months from October 2024.
Extending his professional services to the wider field, he serves on the editorial board of Disability and Society, (Taylor & Francis), and is the review editor of the Indian Journal of Critical Disability Studies, Open Access Journal (curated by Critical Disability Studies in India, New Delhi). He is also a member of the International Paremiological Association, Tavira, Portugal, and the Linguistics Society of India.
Poorvi Gaur
Project Administrator, London
Poorvi Gaur is a doctoral scholar in Film Studies at Queen Mary University of London. Her research project, ‘Planning films for family planning: Situating women in films and practices of Films Division of India (1950-80)’ examines the overlaps between state-sponsored documentary films, family planning campaign and women’s agency in early independent India. Broadly, she is interested in archives, state films, South Asian cinema and women’s filmmaking.
For Connecting Creative Industries and Cultural Heritage (2024-27), Poorvi works as the Project Administrator.
For Connecting Creative Industries and Cultural Heritage (2024-27), Poorvi works as the Project Administrator.