Dr Pawas Bisht (Principal Investigator)

Keele University, UK

Dr Pawas Bisht is Senior Lecturer in Media and Deputy Director, Institute for Sustainable Futures at Keele University (UK).

Pawas 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. 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.

Dr Eva Giraud (Co-Investigator)

University of Sheffield, UK

Dr Eva Giraud is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociological Studies at the University of Sheffield (UK). After completing her PhD in 2011 in the University of Nottingham’s Centre of Critical Theory, Eva worked in the Department of Culture, Film and Media at Nottingham and at Keele University’s Media Department.  

Eva’s research has two strands. In empirical terms, she is interested in the ways that activists negotiate frictions associated with the media platforms they use, particularly the challenges posed by social media. Eva also has a broad conceptual interest in some of the potentials and tensions associated with non-anthropocentric theoretical work. She has drawn these themes together in her books What Comes After Entanglement? (Duke University Press, 2019) and Veganism: Politics, Practice and Theory (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021). Eva is currently on the editorial team of the international journal Cultural Politics. Eva has an H-commons page here.

Dr Sabina Kidwai (Co-Investigator)

AJK MCRC, JMI, India

Dr Sabina Kidwai is Associate Professor at the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India.

Sabina has been teaching film production for nearly three decades at AJK Mass Communication Research centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She has extensive experience in the scripting and editing of environment and wildlife documentaries on a variety of subjects including climate change, sustainable development and wildlife trade. This has included films produced for the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (Government of India) which were screened at COP 21 in Paris and COP 22 in Marrakesh. She co-directed the film ‘Diminishing Resources’ which was produced under the UK Environment Film Fellowship 2006. The film was also screened on Discovery Channel and National Geographic.  She has edited films made for the World Wide Fund for Nature India, ICARDA, US Fish and Wildlife service and many other international organizations. 

She regularly teaches courses on environmental communication using films to generate awareness among media students on environmental issues. She has also given lectures on ‘Media Management and Environment films’ at the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun  and on ‘Science Communication and Environment films’ for Vigyan Prasar, Ministry of Science and Technology (Government of India).

Dr Sudeshna Devi (Research Assistant)

AJK MCRC, JMI, India

Dr Sudeshna Devi is employed as a Research Assistant on the project.

Sudeshna has a PhD in Sociology from the Center for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and MA and M.Phil in Sociology from University of Hyderabad. She has worked independently and institutionally as a researcher on several projects : ‘Paharias: The Struggle of a Tribe for Recognition’, sponsored by UNDP, New Delhi ; “Preparation of District-level Food Insecurity Atlases” at KIIT School of Rural Management, Bhubaneswar,  in collaboration with Institute of Human Development, New Delhi; ‘Women, Political Parties and Decentralised Governments: Case Studies of Women Leaders in India and Cambodia’, sponsored by Local Human Resources and Public Policy Development System Open Research Centre, Ryukoku University, Japan; Corporate Social Responsibility in the Mining Sector of Odisha, sponsored by University of Agder, Norway. Her areas of research are media history, public opinion, newsrooms, media representation, digital media and media consumption. Her work has been published in journals including Journalism Practice, Contemporary South Asia, Journalism, Asian Journal of Communication, New Media and Society and IASSI Quarterly. Her PhD thesis is being published as a monograph titled Media Discourse in Contemporary India: A Study of Television News (Routledge: UK and New York, 2022).