Prof. Vinod Pavarala has been appointed Emeritus Professor at the Sarojini Naidu School of Arts & Communication, the first such honour in the school’s nearly 40-year history. The appointment follows his superannuation as Senior Professor in January 2026, after an association with the University spanning over three decades.
Prof. Pavarala’s contributions to the Department and the University are difficult to overstate. He steered the Department as Head on two occasions and served two terms as Dean of the School, years in which the Department grew into one of the country’s leading centres for media studies and practice. At the University level, he chaired the NAAC Steering Committee, led the University’s Task Force on the resumption of academic activities during the COVID-19 pandemic, served as Director of the Office of International Affairs, and, for some years, was also the University’s Spokesperson.
His contribution to the Department of Communication has been significant. He strengthened its Master’s and PhD programmes, embedded a culture of rigorous research, and has been an exceptional mentor to generations of doctoral scholars and faculty, bringing to that mentorship the same intellectual rigour, patience, and generosity that have defined his own scholarship. As one senior colleague remarked at his recent felicitation, much of the Department’s own infrastructure exists because of his efforts.
It was this academic and institutional standing that led UNESCO to establish the first-ever Chair on Community Media globally at the Department in 2011, entrusting him with building it. In the years since, he has carried out sustained research and advocacy on community radio across not only India and South Asia but also Africa and Europe, shaping national policies in the field and becoming one of the most consequential academic voices in this domain.
Cutting across the fields of communication for social change, community media, and media and democracy, his publications include important journal articles and books such as ‘Other Voices: The Struggle for Community Radio in India’, ‘Community Radio in South Asia: Reclaiming the Airwaves’, and others.
His academic engagements reached beyond India through visiting fellowships at Princeton, Duke, Loughborough, and the University of Queensland, further raising the Department’s profile abroad.
Prof. Vinod Pavarala
His institution-building extended to other universities as well. He has served on the Academic Councils and Boards of Studies at TISS, Ashoka University, and O.P. Jindal Global University.
Prof. Pavarala remains professionally active. He has since joined Mahindra University’s School of Digital Media and Communication as Senior Professor and Advisor, and has been charged with setting up the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Communication & Media (CIRCOM), where he is spearheading and sculpting their PhD programme, and leads India’s arm of a five-nation consortium, with collaborators from Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and South Africa, on a five-year European Research Council project, “Reimagining Activism, Communication and Trajectories of Participation in the Global South (REACT).”
As Emeritus Professor, he will remain associated with the Department in an honorary capacity, ensuring that the institutional memory and mentorship he has provided over the years remain available to the university fraternity and scholars. The Department warmly congratulates Prof. Pavarala on this well-deserved recognition.