Dr. Roshni Sengupta

Dr Roshni Sengupta is a leading scholar in the fields of media, visual and transnational cultures. She works on the interstices of media, politics, and transnational cultures, particularly on the representational politics of the marginalized and marginalization in realms of visual culture such as Indian and South Asian cinema as well as processes of transnational homemaking among Indian-origin diaspora groups in Europe. Her work traces mediatized transnational connections of such communities with their original and spiritual motherland, India, thereby creating a knowledge pool for members of the diaspora groups and scholars based in India. She also studies new trends in political communication in the Global South and hagiographies of the Indian media.

Before joining UPES, Dr. Sengupta taught Indian diaspora and Culture at the Institute of Intercultural Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Poland and Modern South Asia at the Institute of Middle and Far East at the same university. Prior to that, she taught South Asian Culture, Literature and Audio-Visual Methods at the Leiden Institute for Area Studies at the Leiden University in The Netherlands.

Media Studies I Political Communication I Culture Studies I Transnationalism I Media Hagiography I South Asian Studies

As a scholar and teacher of South Asian media and studies of popular culture with wide-ranging exposure to the international teaching and research environment, Dr. Sengupta seeks to bring into the lecture room an in-depth understanding of past and present debates in the field of media and visual cultures, histories and politics. It has been her constant endeavour to combine insights from ongoing research into the changing political nuances of popular culture around the world within theoretical and conceptual frameworks being discussed and taught in the classroom. One of the techniques that Dr Sengupta employs is inculcating critical understanding of concepts, theories and events as well as “flipping the classroom” which includes pre-classroom readings leading to valuable and informative discussions in the class.

Dr Sengupta teaches the core course ‘Indian Polity: democracy and the state’ where she attempts to unpack fundamental concepts and processes, along with an understanding of the major political institutions of India. In addition, she also teaches a foundational course on the Media and Entertainment Industry which provides the students a detailed overview of the culture and business of the media and entertainment industry, thus preparing them for more advanced courses on media management. Dr Sengupta has also been teaching courses on Creative Writing and Digital Media which equips students with the necessary tools and techniques to succeed in a dynamic media scenario.

Dr Sengupta received the Rector’s Award for Distinguished Scholarship at the Jagiellonian University in 2021-22. She was previously an Erasmus Mundus-IBIES Postdoctoral Fellow at the Leiden Institute for Area Studies, Leiden University and an Associate Fellow with the International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden. She received the Asian Modernities and Traditions Grant twice at Leiden University and the POB-Heritage Mini Grant at the Jagiellonian University.

Through teaching and research, Dr. Sengupta has been focusing on developing a methodology for the study of media and culture by decentring global film and media studies and decolonizing the approaches and modes through which film and media are universally studied. Her work seeks to challenge the universalistic principles of studying culture. South Asian cinema for instance – although not homogenous in itself – brings to the fore a revolutionary new aesthetic, hitherto considered outside the realms of scholarly engagement owing to the largely Eurocentric conception of form and aesthetic. Through her research, Dr. Sengupta has been attempting to disengage with the universalism and orientalism of Western cinema studies – which normally exoticizes Indian cinema in the form of Bollywood – and argue for the establishment of a South Asian perspective on the study of cinema. One of the ways in which this is possible is through an engagement with the question of “marginality” in cinema which remains a site of, on the one hand, the perpetuation of marginalities but also a space for dissent and decentring of the discourse on marginality and the marginalized.

roshni.sengupta@ddn.upes.ac.in