The 3L Mantra to live by!

Check out my blog on the London School of Economics Impact Blog regarding Facebook and the Digital Romance Economy. Brief overview... Through the  controversial  internet.org initiative, Facebook now serves as  The Internet  to the majority of the world’s marginalized demographic. The Politics of Data series continues with  Payal Arora  discussing the role of Facebook and internet regulation in the global South. While the West have had privacy laws in place since the 1970s, the emerging markets are only now seriously grappling with this. This piece explores some of the unfolding areas of vulnerability in the digital romance economy.

Who doesn't love sabbaticals! It's one of those ancient and privileged rituals in academia which is prized dearly and rightly so. It allows us to disconnect, recharge and rediscover our passions for writing, reading and engaging with new ideas and people. Time is structured not by grading or teaching but by exploratory thought. With my book deadline with Harvard University Press in the summer of 2016, I have my path carved by this dominant goal. The book Poor@Play: Digital Life beyond the West is not a typical academic book but rather will be written in the style which is more New Yorker ...and that's exciting as its about unlearning journal style writing and going back to a time where we write to engage a larger intelligent public and yet, back it with the vigor of serious scholarship. So what better place to start my sabbatical journey than S teinhardt's NYU. I am working closely with Arjun Appadurai and will be attending the weekly Privacy Research Group unde...

I have for the longest time wanted to start an organization that would bring academia and business together, partly because unlike many academics in the humanities and social sciences, I did shift careers and moved from the business world into this so called 'ivory tower.' Having experienced both worlds, I respect their unique strengths and  am also aware of the challenges that weaken them when it comes to public outreach, one of the cornerstones for any organization in a contemporary democratic society. Being 'accountable' to the public today is not just about transparency but a new kind of communication which is more a dialogue between diverse stakeholders rather than a top down dissemination of information to the public. And with new digital platforms providing potentially new public spheres online, we have little excuse to delay such conversations from happening. Since I'm a big fan of 'manifestos' as it condenses ideals and passions that remind us ...

Last year, I initiated the Privacy and the global South Project with fieldwork on digital privacy in the favelas of Brazil, townships of South Africa and the slums of India. Its been an exciting year and while at it, big data is one of those topics that dominate this discussion. So, wrote a thought piece on this for Discover Society which just came out. Check it out if you are interested in how conversations on surveillance, privacy, big data and trust transfer to this much neglected setting and populace.  Big data and the global south project

After our highly interdisciplinary conference on The Shape of Diversity to Come   at Erasmus University Rotterdam in 2013 where we had a phenomenal line up of keynote speakers including Saskia Sassen , Julie Cohen , Chandran Kukathas , Jos de Mul,  and  Emmanuel Melissaris , we decided that we should have a book out that really takes on interdisciplinary thinking on this issue, exploring tensions as identity and law confront new media developments. So we are proud to now share the volume publised by Palgrave called Crossroads in New Media, Identity and Law  The Shape of Diversity to Come . Here, you will find provocative chapters by Sassen, Cohen, Vermeylen, deMul, and more!  In a nutshell, this volume brings together a number of timely contributions at the nexus of new media, politics and law. The central intuition that ties these essays together is that information and communication technology, cultural identity, and legal and political in...

I have been working for over a decade on the intersection of new communication technologies, social activism, the public sphere and policy . While I have much fieldwork experience in India in this area, I would like to gain a sustained comparative perspective with another emerging market to extend critical understandings across a wider cultural context. Early last year, I initiated a small comparative project on perspectives on privacy among youth from the slums in Hyderabad,India with youth in favelas in Belo Horizonte and Rio, Brazil. Given that much scholarship on digital privacy pertains to concerns in the West, I saw this as an opportunity to delve into an underrepresented context for a more cross-cultural and transnational dialogue on privacy. Besides, our understandings on ‘digital privacy’ need to go beyond the online realm, and explore the diverse social norms and spheres these private behaviors inhabit. While fieldwork continues in these two contexts through resear...

I was recently interviewed by Deutsche Welle on the hype around mobile-technology and education in Africa for the article below: Why a mobile-technology revolution needs teachers Mobile tech is revolutionizing banking and farming in Africa. But when it comes to education, it's increasing the gap between rural and urban communities. The solution to this dilemma may surprise you...[read the rest here   ]

Nimmi Rangaswamy from Xerox Research Labs in India and I have been working for some years now on this theme and topic of digital leisure in the global South . We have been arguing for a shift in perspective on internet behavior of emerging market consumers, particularly those who are marginalized socio-economically. Instead of looking at their behavior through a mainly utilitarian lens, we argue that even (or arguably especially) the poor engage with new technologies for more social, playful and entertainment ends.  Here is our paper published by the International Journal of Cultural Studies that substantiates this argument with fieldwork data in urban slums of India, validating our call for a new approach in examining digital practices among these 'newbie' consumers of the global south.  The abstract for this paper is as follows:  The wild and the everyday point at once to twinned aspects of life and, in this article, to a technological imaginary drawing up...

It was a wonderful experience to serve as a Plenary Speaker for the Technology, Knowledge & Society Conference held this time at the University of Berkeley, California. The theme was ' Big Data and the Politics of Participation in a Digital Age .' Since the other plenary speaker  Deirdre K. Mulligan  from Berkeley's School of Information was talking primarily on the legality of big data and how diverse corporations interpret compliance in the United States and Europe, it was nice to contrast this with perspectives from the global South. After all, most of the conversation around big data seems to be hijacked by Western concerns, issues and contexts. My talk, ' Bottom of the Data Pyramid: Big data perspectives from the global South ' played with the much hyped Development idea on the bop as a new consumer base, inverting decades of viewing the poor in the global South as passive beneficiaries to now active co-creators of their own data.What do we know after...

Nimmi Rangaswamy and I wrote a chapter on ' digital romance in the Indian city' based on our years of fieldwork in slums of India - on how the youth are engaging and participating on social media in ways that are creative, romantic and deeply social. This series, The City & South Asia is an exciting and accessible anthology of voices from diverse scholars on urbanism, South Asia and contemporary issues and developments in emerging markets. The best part is this is open access -what all scholarship should be in the 21st Century - good going Harvard University Press! Digital romance in the Indian City