About

Ways of Seeing is a digital humanities project, and like most such projects it was built by more people than its byline shows. It began in 2021–22 as coursework in Critical Media Literacy with Prof. Jeff Share at UCLA, and at different points it was enhanced by the interventions, engagement, feedback, and training of Prof. Michelle Caswell, Prof. Miriam Posner, Prof. Nour Joudah, Prof. David Shorter, Prof. Aparna Sharma, and Andrea Gambino.

It is also the result of years of work in India that would not have been possible without the co-labour, feedback, participation, training, and engagement of Prof. Anup Dhar, Gurpreet Kaur, Dr. Bhavya Chitranshi, Prateek, Sindhunil Chatterjee, Ashutosh Kumar, Neeraj Kumar, Swarnima Kiriti, Prof. Imran Amin, and Prof. Ishita Dey; of collaborators in Jharkhand over the past decade, among them Debanjan Ghatak, Shuvakant Naik, Satish Patnaik, Sumita Kasana, Souparno Chatterjee, Nivedita Menon, and Shuvajit Chakrovorty; and of collectives including Eka Nari Sangathan, Chinhari, and Akhra Ranchi, with many others too numerous to name here.

My particular thanks to Biju Toppo, Meghnath, and Rupesh Kr Sahu of AKHRA, recorded on the home page.

This platform cannot be detached from my position as an India- and Delhi-based, urban-educated, cisgender man doing doctoral research at a globally recognized university at the heart of the Global West. My academic training in Development Studies and Development Practice shaped my awareness of discrimination, marginalization, and well-being alongside the power dynamics of everyday life.

My background includes collaborative work on culturally sensitive films across Eastern India’s Indigenous regions, including language study among the communities involved. I have engaged in scholarly and community-based artistic projects examining alternative development practices and possibilities of creative expression — questions of media, authorship, and knowledge production.

Being an outsider in Indigenous spaces means constantly negotiating privileges and their dismounting, and the tension between maintaining intellectual distance and avoiding romanticization. I frame this positionality as both an ethical and an intellectual responsibility: to represent diverse voices authentically, and to resist and counter the dominant and exploitative narratives directed at Indigenous communities.

Ways of Seeing is curated by Arpit Gaind. To suggest a record, ask for a correction or a removal, or ask about access, write to contact@arpitgaind.com.