My name is Akshaya Kumar and I am an Associate Professor in Film, Media and Cultural Studies (Sociology) at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Indore. 

My research has gradually moved away from Film Studies - interwoven with the questions of provinciality, regional cinema, politics of underdevelopment - towards Comparative Media Studies. My Film/Cultural Studies work was published in Social Text, Postmodern Culture, Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Jump Cut, and TV & New Media among other journals. My recent work, which largely focuses on Platform Capitalism, Logistical Media, Computational Cultures and Digitality in India, has been published in Media Industries, Asiascape: Digital Asia, Media, Culture & Society, Journal of Digital Media & Policy, Media International Australia,  and several edited volumes (see Publications). I also co-edit a Springer Nature (Palgrave) Book series titled Platform Societies.

My first monograph, Provincializing Bollywood: Bhojpuri Cinema in the Comparative Media Crucible was published in 2021 by Oxford University Press. While addressing the problem of representing the region in "regional cinema", it offers an analysis of the fascinating intersections of Hindi film industry and Bhojpuri music industry via environmental history, language politics, and the industrial transformation of the distribution-exhibition ecosystem. At the end, the book invites the readers to think of the comparative media crucible from the provincial point of view, which is as much an exercise about language and genres as it is about political geography and environmental history, all of which do not easily abide by borders and boundary conditions (see Books).

In the past, I successfully defended my PhD thesis in 2015, entitled Provincialising Bollywood: Bhojpuri Cinema and the Vernacularisation of North Indian Media, at the University of Glasgow. My doctoral work was supported by Screen studentship and the University of Glasgow.

I have been an Assistant Professor at Ambedkar University Delhi (July 2016-June 2017), and a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University (Sept-Oct 2013). 

I am currently working towards a book, tentatively titled India by the Platforms, to be co-authored with Prof. Adrian Athique (University of Queensland).

With Prof. Athique, I am also co-editing a Special Section titled The Logics of Asian Platform Capitalism for the journal Economy & Society (in review).

Akshaya Kumar is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Indore. He received his doctorate from the University of Glasgow on Screen studentship in 2015 and went on to publish his first monograph, Provincializing Bollywood: Bhojpuri Cinema in the Comparative Media Crucible (Oxford University Press, 2021). His ongoing research traverses Platform capitalism, Comparative media studies and Logistical media. He has published many articles in peer-reviewed journals including Social Text, Postmodern Culture, Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Media Industries and Media, Culture & Society. He also co-edits the Palgrave Book Series Platform Societies.

• Indian Media Economy - Stardom, Caste, Region, Political Geography and Mass cultures

• Comparative Media Studies - Control vs Communication Infrastructures

• Platform Capitalism - EdTech, HealthTech, AgriTech, Domestic labour and Gambling platforms 

• Internet Capitalism - Venture Capital, Financialization, Promotional Infrastructures

• Information Warfare - Weaponisation of the Post-War architecture in Global Economic History 

• Environmental Media Studies - Metabolic Rift vis-a-vis the Materiality of the Digital

Doctoral candidates interested in the above-mentioned areas may write to me with a research proposal at: akshaya.kumar@iiti.ac.in

Prospective authors, especially those working on South Asian digital platform cultures, may write to me  about relevant titles for the Palgrave Book Series Platform Societies.

Most of my research publications can be downloaded from Academia. You can also view my profile on Google Scholar, ResearchGate, IRINS, and ORCiD. 

I was also interviewed in 2022 by IIT Kanpur's student journalism magazine - Vox Populi - on my career.