Vinod Pavarala

Vinod Pavarala is Senior Professor and Advisor, School of Digital Media and Communication, where he also heads the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Media and Communication. Prior to his joining Mahindra University, Prof. Pavarala was at the Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad (UoH), where he taught for over three decades. At UoH, besides serving as the Head of the Department and the Dean of the Sarojini Naidu School of Arts & Communication, he held the UNESCO Chair on Community Media, the first of its kind globally, for nearly 15 years, since its establishment in 2011.

He has a dual Masters in Communication & Journalism (Osmania University, Hyderabad) and Sociology (University of Hyderabad) before he went on to do his Ph.D. in Sociology from University of Pittsburgh, USA.  He taught at University of Pittsburgh, Virginia Tech, and IIT-Bombay before he took up a faculty position at UoH.  He held visiting positions at Princeton University, Loughborough University London, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Ashoka University, and University of Queensland (where he was most recently a George Watson Visiting Fellow). Over the years, Prof. Pavarala has served on the Academic Councils, Boards of Studies, and Advisory Committees of several public and private universities, including the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Central University of Tamil Nadu, O.P. Jindal Global University, and Ashoka University. He is currently the Chair of the Community Communication and Alternative Media Section of the International Association for Media & Communication Research (IAMCR), and co-Principal editor of the international journal, Journal of Community and Alternative Media published by Intellect. He is on the editorial boards of several other international journals.

• Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh, 1992
• M.A. Sociology, University of Hyderabad, 1987
• M.C.J., Osmania University, 1984
• B.Sc. (Hons), Osmania University, 1982

• BOOKS
• Interpreting Corruption: Elite Perspectives in India (Sage, 1997)
• Other Voices: the struggle for community radio in India (with Kanchan K. Malik; Sage, 2007)
• Community Radio in South Asia: Reclaiming the Airwaves (edited with Kanchan K. Malik; Routledge, 2020).
• Forthcoming: a 2-volume book on community communication in India, (co-edited with Aniruddha Jena), Routledge
• Forthcoming: Handbook of Health Communication in the Global South (co-edited with Thomas Tufte and Eliza Govender), Wiley-Blackwell. 
• SELECTED BOOK CHAPTERS
• (with Aniruddha Jena). Radio and Politics, Elgar Encyclopedia of Political Communication, Elgar Publishers, 2025.
• Pavarala, V. (2024). Community Radio in the Times of COVID-19: Experiences from the Global South. In: Lewis, M., Govender, E., Holland, K. (eds) Communicating COVID-19. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41237-0_2
• (with Aniruddha Jena and Vasuki Belavadi). “Constructing Community and Building Identity through Indigenous Community Media: The Case of Radio Swayamshakti in Odisha, India. In A. Salawu, T. B. Molale, E. Uribe-Jongbloed, & M. S. Ullah (Eds.), Indigenous Language for Social Change Communication in the Global South (pp. 179–198). Rowman & Littlefield. https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781666912050/Indigenous-Language-for-Social-Cha…, 2023.
• (with Kanchan K. Malik and Aniruddha Jena). “Community Radio as Development Radio: A Critical Analysis of Third-Sector Radio in South Asia,” in Lindgren M. and Loviglio, J (eds), Routledge Companion to Radio and Podcast Studies, London & New York: Routledge, 2022. (with Kanchan K. Malik). “Vocal for Local Information During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Role of Community Radios in Addressing the Digital Divide in South Asia,” in Friesem Y, Raman U, Kanizaj I, Choi GY, The Routledge Handbook of Media Education Futures Post-Pandemic, London & New York: Routledge, 2022.
• (with Kanchan K. Malik) “Community Radio for Social Change: Restoring Decentralized Democratic Discursive Spaces,” in Srinivas Raj Melkote and Arvind Singhal (eds), Handbook of Communication and Development, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021.
• (with Kanchan K. Malik) “Negotiating the Political in the Community Radio Sphere: Historical Choices, Contemporary Predicaments,” in Faiz Ullah, Anjali Monteiro, K.P. Jayasankar (eds), Many Voices, Many Worlds: Critical Perspectives on Community Media in India, Sage, 2021.
• “Intangible Outcomes (of Communication for Social Change),” in Jo Tacchi and Thomas Tufte (eds), Communicating for Change: Concepts to Think With, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
• SELECTED JOURNAL ARTICLES
• (with Aniruddha Jena, Bridget Backhaus & Vasuki Belavadi) “Challenging hegemony in the Global South: radio Dhimsa’s cultural and knowledge interventions,” Third World Quarterly, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2026.2625980
• (with Madhavi Ravikumar, John Downey, Nimmagadda Bhargav, Debasreeta Deb, Rohit K. Dasgupta) “Between Media Capture and Journalistic Autonomy: The Lived Experience of Indian Journalists,” Journalism (Forthcoming)
• (with Madhavi Ravikumar, John Downey, Nimmagadda Bhargav, Debasreeta Deb, Rohit K. Dasgupta) “Media and Citizenship in India: Heteronomy and Autonomy in the Indian Journalistic Field,” Journalism Studies, DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2024.2397679, September 2024.
• (with Aniruddha Jena) “Expanding Discursive Spaces: Community Radio during Covid-19 and Beyond,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 55, Issue No. 49, 12 Dec, 2020. https://www.epw.in/engage/article/expanding-discursive-spaces-community-radio-during-covid-19
• (with Jharna Brahma, Vasuki Belavadi) “Driving Social Change Through Forum Theatre: A Study of Jana Sanskriti in West Bengal, India,” Asia Pacific Media Educator, vol.29 issue 2, September 2019 164-177.

Prof. Pavarala has over three decades of experience teaching and researching communication and media studies as well as guiding several doctoral students. He is recognised as one of the leading communication scholars in India, whose work on community media and social change has won him global acclaim. His administrative experience includes his various stints as Head of Department, Dean of School, and as a member of apex academic bodies within educational institutions. At University of Hyderabad, he chaired important committees such as the NAAC Steering Committee and the NEP Implementation Committee. His more than a decade-long leadership of the UNESCO Chair on Community Media saw him engaging with policy-makers, activists, practitioners and advocates of community media around the world.

Prof. Pavarala’s research has been in the areas of communication for social change, community media, and media and democracy. At University of Hyderabad, he successfully guided 15 PhDs and several Master’s theses. He has been actively involved in research, policy advocacy, and capacity building in the field of community media, not only in India and elsewhere in South Asia, but also in East and West Africa and parts of Europe. He has been part of several national, international and multilateral collaborative research grants, including from UNESCO, UNICEF, Australian Research Council, Arts & Humanities Research Council of UK, SPARC (Government of India, Scheme for Academic and Research Collaboration), and the European Research Council. He is currently the Senior Researcher for India in the ERC-funded, five-country (India, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia), five-year (2026-2030) project, REACT (Reimagining Activism, Communication and Trajectories of Participation in the Global South), headed globally by Prof. Thomas Tufte of Loughborough University, UK.