The project team (Bisht, Giraud, and Kidwai) alongwith community partners B Arts delivered an activity series titled ‘Environmental Storytelling Between Stoke-on-Trent and New Delhi’ at the 2021 Being Human Festival (UK’s national festival of the Humanities; led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London, in partnership by the AHRC and the British Academy). The activity has been showcased as a model of best practice in public engagement by the festival organisers and Dr Pawas Bisht was invited to share his experience and knowledge at an online webinar for 2022 applicants: https://beinghumanfestival.org/get-involved/applying-being-human-2022
Bisht spoke about the value pf public engagement work, the significance of choosing the right community partners, and ways of engaging audiences and enabling participatory dialogue. A recording of the event can be viewed here:
Dr Pawas Bisht is a Senior Lecturer in Media, Communications and Culture, Deputy Director of the Institute for Sustainable Futures, and Programme Director for the MA Global Media programmes at Keele University. He is an experienced media researcher and documentary filmmaker and has previously worked for leading institutions in the UK (Loughborough and Leicester) and India (AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia). His research focuses on media and cultural politics in relation to environmental activism, cultural memory, and public mobilisations of documentary storytelling. Pawas is currently leading ‘Storytelling for Environmental Change’, a two-year research project (2021-2023) that mobilises environmental storytelling to tackle the catastrophic challenge of urban air pollution confronting India (funded by the British Academy's Humanities and Social Sciences’ Tackling Global Challenges Programme, supported under the UK Government's Global Challenges Research Fund). His earlier ethnographic research on social movements and memory-work in relation to the Bhopal Gas Disaster has been published in leading journals including Media, Culture & Society and Contemporary South Asia.
His films have been shown on Channel 4 (UK), CNBC, and Doordarshan (India’s national public service broadcaster) as well as in art venues in UK, India, US, and Europe. They include work commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme and the Global Environment Facility. Recently produced films include 'Back to the Drawing Board' (2017), a portrait of the British designers Pat Albeck and Peter Rice, ‘Memory Archipelago’ (2018), an examination of the politics of Gulag memory on the Solovetsky Islands in Russia’s Far North, and ‘(Not) Acting Our Age’ (2019), examining ageing, theatre and creativity.
Pawas is a member of the AHRC Peer Review College.
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