Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia

Dr. Swapnil Rai is a Global Media scholar. Her current research focuses on media-led soft power & public diplomacy in South Asia and BRICS nations. Dr. Rai’s work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as the International Journal of Communication, JumpCut, Journal of the School of Literature (JSL) and Cinephile. Her forthcoming book is a historical analysis of the role of Bollywood stars in enabling Indian Hindi cinema’s global presence.

Dr. Rai holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Radio, TV and Film, Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin. She earned her Masters degree in Cinema-Television from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, and another Masters in English from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. In her prior professional experience as a journalist, writer and editor in the United States and India, she covered beats pertaining to cinema, art and culture. She has worked for Thomson Reuters in the multimedia services space.