Sanjay Asthana earned his Ph.D. in Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of Minnesota. He also holds an MPhil degree in Philosophy and an MA Communication from the University of Hyderabad in India. Dr. Asthana teaches courses in visual communication, media studies, globalization, and communication technologies. He worked as a radio broadcaster at the All India Radio (state-regulated network) in India, where he scripted and produced current affairs programs and numerous documentaries on social and political themes.
Dr. Asthana’s major research areas include globalization and media, visual communications, postcolonial theory, and cultural studies. Dr. Asthana is the author of the UNESCO monograph, Innovative Practices of Youth Participation in Media, published in 2006. It included several initiatives from Ghana, Haiti, India, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Mozambique, Nigeria, Somalia, South Africa, Vietnam, and Zambia as case studies of young people directly involved in creating, designing, and producing media content – newspaper graphics work, page design and layout, radio broadcasts, television/video production, and digital multimedia-based materials.
Dr. Asthana is the author of Youth Media Imaginaries from Around the World published by Peter Lang in 2012. He has co-authored, Media Information Literacy: Policy and Strategy Guidelines, a report published by UNESCO in 2013. Dr. Asthana completed a large research grant on Palestinian and Israeli youth media practices that was published as a book, Palestinian Youth Media and the Pedagogies of Estrangement by Palgrave Macmillan in 2016. Dr. Asthana's recent book, India’s State-run Media: Broadcasting, Power, Narrative has been published by the Cambridge University Press in 2019.

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A sample of recent work (see CV for complete list)

Books

India’s State-run Media: Broadcasting, Power, and Narrative. Cambridge University Press, 2019

Why I wrote this book... http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2019/09/why-do-you-want-to-study-indias-state-run-media/

Palestinian Youth Media and the Pedagogies of Estrangement. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Youth Media Imaginaries from Around the World. New York: Peter Lang, 2012

Report:

Media and Information Literacy: Policy and Strategy Guidelines. Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 2013
(Co-Authored) Link. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000225606

Journals

Television, Memory, and History: ‘Informal knowledge’ of Doordarshan on the Internet. Participations, Vol. 16, No. 2, 2019

Translation and Localization of Children’s Rights in Youth-Produced Digital Media in the Global South. New Media and Society, Vol. 19, No. 5, 2017

Youth, Self, Other: A Study of Ibdaa’s Digital Media Practices in the West Bank, Palestine. International Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2017

Broadcasting, Space, and Sovereignty in India. Media, Culture and Society, Vol. 35, No. 4, 2013

Book Chapters

Youth, ICTs, and ‘Violent Extremism’: A Media Education Perspective. In Divina Frau-Meigs, Sirkku Johanna Kotilainen, Manisha Pathak-Shelat, Michael Hoechsmann, and Stuart R Poyntz, Eds. A Handbook of Media Education Research. Wiley, Blackwell, 2020

Translocality, Imagination, and the Political: A Hermeneutic Exploration of Youth Media Initiatives from India and Palestine. In Jacqueline Kennelly and Stuart Poyntz (Eds.) Phenomenology of Youth Culture and Globalization: Lifeworlds and Surplus Meanings in Changing Times. Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought, 2015

Translocality, Imagination, and the Political: A Hermeneutic Exploration of Youth Media Initiatives from India and Palestine. In Jacqueline Kennelly and Stuart Poyntz (Eds.) Phenomenology of Youth Culture and Globalization: Lifeworlds and Surplus Meanings in Changing Times. Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought, 2015

Television, Narrative Identity, and Social Imaginaries in India. In Abhijit Roy and Biswarup Sen (Eds.) Channeling Cultures: Television Studies from India. Oxford University Press, 2014

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For a complete list (see CV)

Invited Speaker

“Media, Environment, and Climate Change in the Vernacular: Reflections from the Field.” Climate Change Workshop for Journalists, Dr. MCR, HRD Institute, Jubilee Hills, Government of Telangana, June 21-22, 2023 (Sponsored by the U.S. Consulate General, Hyderabad, India). https://twitter.com/USAndHyderabad/status/1671519180179361795

“Water and the Environmental Crisis.” World Water Day: Accelerating the Change, Convergence for Sustainability and Environment & People, Hyderabad, India, March 22, 2023. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1THCOms56I 

“Geography, Media, Environment: Earth Ontologies and the Human Finitude.” Council of Earth Leadership and Sustainability, The Earth Centre, Opposite Pyramid, Kadthal, Telangana, India, August 6, 2022. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCWGMfU9Jzk

Media Education, Youth, and ‘Violent Extremism, presentation at the Working Session on Media Literacy: Tools for Building Resilience to Violent Extremist Propaganda. Alliance of Civilizations, Seventh Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, Baku, Azerbaijan, April 26-27, 2016. http://baku.unaoc.org/speaker/sanjay-asthana/

Conference Presentations:

Sovereignty, Power, and Agency in Neoliberal Configurations of Media and Governance in the Global South, for International Communication Association (ICA), Virtual Conference, Engaging the Essential Work of Care: Communication, Connectedness, and Social Justice, 27-31 May 2021

Youth, ICTs, and Violent Extremism: A Non-representational Approach, for Media in Transition 10: Democracy and Digital Media, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, May 16-18, 2019

Youth Media and the Pedagogies of Estrangement, for the Communication, Postcoloniality, and Social Justice: Decolonizing Imaginations conference, Waterhouse Family Institute for the study of Communication and Society, Villanova University, PA, March 26th-29th, 2015

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Fulbright U.S. Scholar to India, United States Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, January 2021

National Priorities Research Program (NPRP), Qatar National Research Fund Grant, Youth Media Imaginaries in Palestine: A Hermeneutic Exploration. ($253,222), 2011

Horizon 2020, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Seal of Excellence, UNICEF, New ICTs, and Children: An Interdisciplinary Approach, H2020-MSCA-IF-2018, ("awarded to high quality project proposals that remain un-funded due to budget shortfall"), August 2019

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Research Grant, Innovative Practices of Youth Participation in Media. Paris, France ($12,400), July 2005

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Heterodox intellectual orientation that underscores the importance of innovative research program that enables one to generate specific research clusters around a set of problems, create and sustain cross-disciplinary dialogues among researchers, academicians, policymakers, and practitioners from the Global North and the South. Such dialogues and collaborations open up fresh insights about democratic processes leading to a better understanding of the interplay between the different ways in which we come to know and interpret our plural life-worlds.

Invitations from UNESCO, UN, and national governments; research and policy expert for UNESCO, UNICEF, UNDP, United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), national and international organizations on media education, media literacy, digital media, children and youth media.

UNICEF, The State of the World's Children, Children in the Digital Age, 2017

https://www.unicef.org/iran/media/1021/file/The%20State%20of%20the%20World%27s%20Children%202017.pdf

“Media Education, Youth, and ‘Violent Extremism,’” presentation at the Working Session on Media Literacy: Tools for Building Resilience to Violent Extremist Propaganda. Alliance of Civilizations, Seventh Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, Baku, Azerbaijan, April 26-27, 2016

http://baku.unaoc.org/speaker/sanjay-asthana/

Forum Report (see pages 58-59)

http://baku.unaoc.org/7th-unaoc-global-forum-report/

Experts Consultative Meeting on Good Practices in Community Media, Organized by UNESCO, Paris, France, February 9-11, 2009 [Advice and guidance in producing UNESCO’s Handbook on Community Media]

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002150/215097e.pdf

“Building the AoC Clearinghouse: Media Literacy Education,” Working Session. Alliance of Civilizations, First Annual Forum, United Nations, Sponsored by the Government of Spain, Madrid, Spain, January 15-16, 2008. Forum Report:

https://www.unaoc.org/images/aoc%20forum%20report%20madrid%20complete.pdf

Media Education Workshop, Riyadh, 2007

http://www.mediamentor.org/files/attachments/FCME_report_final_def_small1.pdf

UNESCO Monograph, Innovative Practices of Youth Participation in Media, 2006

https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000149279

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