Showcasing ideology on a bigger platform

Youngster from city, Preeti Raghunath’s efforts and interest towards media policy in South Asia have turned fertile. Her papers have stood out of the box and she is one among the select few who bagged the opportunity for Paper Presentation at the third International Conference on Public Policy, Singapore.

Preeti is a PhD researcher at Department of Communication, SN School. She has been awarded the Asian Scholar Grant for the International Public Policy Association’s annual conference, which is organised by the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, from June 28 to 30.

She will be presenting two papers, as part of panels on ‘Methodology for Comparative Policy Analysis’, and ‘Theory and Practice of Deliberative Policy Analysis’.

“My academic work has been an effort to marry the two disciplines, since I felt that media as an important non-state actor, and communication and deliberation as a process of human interaction had not been studied in a big way in International Studies,” shares Preeti.

“I also did feel that it would be interesting to bring in regional/multi-country work into Communication, something that needs more academic work in our part of the world. The construction of global media policy emerged as the ground that helped bring these ideas together.

I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to work as a Research Assistant with the UNESCO Chair on Community Media, in the Department of Communication, SN School, which allowed me the opportunity and access to work on research projects, and understand community radio,” she adds.

Her doctoral research is a policy ethnography that seeks to understand policymaking for community radio in four countries of South Asia. “I have a pet project idea on creating some kind of a support base for Young Adult Caregivers, and hope to work on it soon,” shares Preeti.

Sharing about her future, she says, “I definitely want to make a mark for myself in the broad area of media policy in South Asia, and contribute to research and praxis. We have centres on South Asia in universities abroad, but seldom do we undertake regional research in India.

I’d like to try and see if I can contribute to changing that, and bring in more mediapolicy and research collaboration in the region, as also in the larger Asia-Pacific region, wherever I land up after my PhD.”

By Bhagyashree Kottoori