Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram

Whilst specialising in World Cinemas, particularly new independent Indian Cinema, emerging cinemas from South Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa, my teaching and research interests are open to transdisciplinary and intercultural exploration. I am also interested in intersections of cinematic representations with topical themes and alternative discourses, particularly through the prism of philosophy, politics, drama, visual art, postcolonialism, postmodernism, migration, marginalised and minority narratives and subalternity.

My monograph India's New Independent Cinema: Rise of the Hybrid (Routledge Advances in Film Studies, 2016) is the world’s first book on new Indian Indie cinema. I delivered the prestigious 12th Annual Phalke Memorial Lecture 2015 at the Indian High Commission's Nehru Centre in London. I am actively engaged in film festival curation as Programming Adviser for the London Asian Film Festival (LAFF) and Creative Director of the first Edinburgh Asian Film Festival (EAFF 2016) at the iconic Filmhouse. I am currently on the advisory panel for the BFI's 'India on Film' - a major project on Indian film from 1899 to the present - part of the UK-India Year of Culture 2017.
I received the Edinburgh University Literary Award in 2012 for my analysis of Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman's La Folie Almayer.

I have worked in the past as a TV documentary researcher and filmmaker with Channel 4. I am currently a BBC Academy Expert Voice in Cultural Studies and Visual Arts. Some of the themes from my academic and philosophical introspections spill over into music - I compose songs and play lead guitar with transglobal neo-progressive rock project -The Multitude.