Professor Vinod Pavarala visits Loughborough University London

Prof. Pavarala is part of the DUO-India fellowship programme with Professor Jo Tacchi, Associate Dean for Teaching and Professor of Media and Creative Industries. The programme is designed to promote the exchange of people and provide mobility between India and European countries. In 2020, Prof. Tacchi visited the University of Hyderabad as part of the exchange, delivering lectures and engaging with doctoral students. Professors Pavarala and Tacchi have collaborated for a number of years on communication and social change projects, most notably in recent years on a research project to improve the evaluation of communication for development (C4D). Funded by the Australian Research Council and UNICEF that research produced the C4D Evaluation Resource Hub, a growing collection of the best available guides, toolkits, tools and methods to use for researching monitoring and evaluating Communication for Development initiatives.

As well as being a senior professor, Prof. Pavarala is UNESCO Chair on Community Media; the only one of its kind dedicated to furthering the cause of community-led-and managed media. The work is carried out through research, policy advocacy, capacity-building and training activities which aim to provide an outreach mechanism for increased access to education, self-expression, and communication among rural and hard-to-reach populations. In particularly community radio, which allows communities a sense of ownership about their development agenda, becoming self-empowered to publicly express opinion, debate issues and to promote the culture, history, and language of their community. Prof. Pavarala has contributed to community media development not only in the South Asian region, but also in East and West Africa and parts of Europe.

Vinod published a book with Kanchan K Malik, Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Hyderabad, in 2007 titled ‘Other Voices, The Struggle for Community Radio in India’. It is a significant study of an emerging alternative media scene in India, in the larger context of the globalisation of mass communication. The study investigated the ideologies and communication practices of various community-based organisations that have been using community radio as a means for empowerment at the grassroots. In 2022, Pavarala and Malik published an edited volume, ‘Community Radio in South Asia, Reclaiming the Airwaves’ that outlines the socioeconomic and historical contexts for understanding the evolution and functioning of community radio in an increasingly globalised media environment. He has published several articles in scholarly journals and contributed book chapters to a number of edited volumes. One of his ongoing projects, supported by AHRC, is a collaborative one with Professor John Downey (Loughborough) on the issue of news media framing of citizenship in India. Prof. Pavarala currently chairs the Community Communication Section of IAMCR.

“Whilst in the UK, I will contribute to the ongoing teaching and research in international development and global communication-social change programmes, here at Loughborough University London. I will offer perspectives from the Global South on communication for social change to highlight the role of community media in addressing voice inequities that position marginalised groups at a disadvantage.” Professor Vinod Pavarala

“It is wonderful to have Vinod Pavarala with us for a month here at the Institute for Media and Creative Industries, where we have a strong research interest in communication and social change. Professor Pavarala is a leading scholar in this field, and I had the pleasure of spending a month in his Department (now School) of Communication at the University of Hyderabad just before the first lockdown.” Professor Jo Tacchi

Interested in hearing Prof. Vinod Pavarala speak? Prof. Pavarala will be speaking as part of the CRCC Seminar Series on the 8th of June 2022. His talk on ‘Negotiating the Political in the Indian Community Radio Sphere’, will examine the complex ways in which the community radio sector in India has been negotiating the ‘political’ in their programming as well as through their engagement with the state. For more information, take a look here. Prof. Pavarala will also be giving a talk at Loughborough University London, on ‘Community Radio for Social Change’ where he will examine community radio as a tool to counter the effects of media globalization and of the unimpeded intensification of large-scale media conglomerates. This talk will take place on 6th June, contact Prof. Tacchi for details.

If you are unable to make the events but want an opportunity to speak to Prof. Pavarala, reach out to his email vinodp@uohyd.ac.in.