Prof. Kanchan K. Malik and Prof. Vasuki Belavadi, faculty members from the Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad (UoH), visited the University of Queensland (UQ), Brisbane, Australia, from October 17–26, 2025, under the Government of India’s SPARC (Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration) initiative.
SPARC team@UQ
The visit was coordinated by Prof. Elske van de Fliert and Prof. Pradip N. Thomas from the School of Communication and Arts at UQ. The visit was part of the collaborative research project titled “Community Media, Participation & the Decolonisation of Indigenous Knowledge Systems” (SPARC Project Code: P1863), jointly implemented by UoH and UQ. The project team comprises Prof. Vinod Pavarala, Prof. Kanchan K. Malik, and Prof. Vasuki Belavadi at UoH, and Professors Pradip Thomas and Elske van de Fliert at UQ. The two UoH faculty members are also Faculty Fellows with the UNESCO Chair on Community Media, housed at the University of Hyderabad.
CSC panel speakers
During their stay, Profs. Malik and Belavadi held comprehensive discussions with their UQ counterparts to develop an outline for a monograph, one of the project’s key outputs. They also participated in an experts’ panel on “Communication for Social Change (CSC) in Theory and Practice”, organised for undergraduate and postgraduate students enrolled in the CSC courses at UQ.
The visit included a day-long academic interaction at Griffith University, Brisbane, where the two professors met with Prof. Susan Forde, Prof. Heather Anderson, Dr. Bridget Backhaus, Dr. Samid Suliman, and Dr. Kasun Ubayasiri to explore opportunities for continued academic collaboration and knowledge exchange in the areas of community media and participatory communication.
Towards future collaborations @Griffith
A highlight of the visit was a field visit to 4ZZZ 102.1 FM, an independent community radio station in Brisbane and Australia’s first community FM broadcaster. Established in 1975, 4ZZZ has played a pioneering role in alternative broadcasting. The visit provided valuable insights into the station’s engagement with Indigenous programming and its broader contribution to community broadcasting in Australia. The timing of the visit coincided with the station’s preparations for its 50th-anniversary celebrations, offering a unique glimpse into the legacy and sustainability of community media initiatives.
A visit to radio 4ZZZ 102.1 FM
This visit follows earlier engagements under the same SPARC project: two doctoral scholars from UoH visited UQ from April 6-21, 2025, and Prof. Vinod Pavarala spent two weeks at UQ’s School of Communication and Arts in August 2024 as a George Watson Visiting Fellow.