Prof. Vinod Pavarala, Senior Professor of Communication and UNESCO Chair on Community Media, has returned from a productive eight-day academic visit to the UK from September 20-28, 2022.

CR-CIT Workshop at Totnes

Prof. Pavarala was invited to conduct a one-day workshop at Totnes in South Devon on the Community Radio Continuous Improvement Toolkit (CR-CIT) developed by the UNESCO Chair on Community Media and now adapted in India and Bangladesh, besides Germany and East Africa. The workshop organized by Soundart Radio in Totnes was supported by Bath University and attended by about 40 representatives from 10 community radio stations and three universities. The participant group is exploring ways to adapt the CR-CIT to the UK context with an emphasis on a more participatory, community ethos undergirding community radio.

At the University of Exeter Lecture

Prof. Pavarala also delivered an invited lecture on “Community Radio as Development Radio: A critical analysis of third-sector radio in South Asia” at the Research Seminar series of University of Exeter’s Department of Communications, Drama, and Film. The talk was based on a paper of the same title (co-authored with Prof. Kanchan K. Malik and Aniruddha Jena) published recently in the Routledge Companion to Radio and Podcast Studies (2022). He also interacted with faculty members of the department and discussed possibilities for collaboration in teaching and research.

With Prof. Boaventura de Sousa Santos at Loughborough University

Earlier, Prof. Pavarala attended the International Advisory Board meeting of Loughborough University (London)’s recently launched Master’s programmes on international development, sustainable development, and global communication and social change. He is a member of this prestigious board consisting of academics and civil society representatives from the UK as well as the Global South. He also participated in the inaugural Paulo Freire Memorial Lecture organized by the Institute for Media & Creative Industries (IMCI), Loughborough University, delivered by the eminent Portuguese sociologist, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, which was followed by a workshop on some his ideas about epistemologies of the South.

 

Photo Credits: Soundart Radio, Rob Watson and Aditya Deshbandhu