Usha Raman
Biographic Data
| ID | 186924 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Usha Raman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Usha |
| FAMILY NAME | Raman |
| SIGNATURE | RAMAN U |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Hyderabad |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9023-9853 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 18 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Shortcuts and scholarship
Generative AI is changing not just how academic work gets done, but whether the processes that build genuine understanding are happening at all. This essay, written collaboratively by an early career researcher and a senior scholar in communication and media studies, argues that the real risk is not that AI will replace researchers, but that it will quietly erode the conditions under which researchers are formed, and indeed, what counts as resear…
Mainstreaming Decolonial Perspectives in Media and Communication
Over the past two decades, there have been many calls and efforts to decolonize and de-westernize research in media and communication (Aouragh & Chakravartty 2016; Couldry & Mejias 2019; Ricaurte 2019). While these efforts have generated valuable academic centers, community-driven projects, and South-to-South networks (e.g., CARGC, FemLab, Tierra Comun), the field is still dominated by (implicit) universalist perspectives. Often the Anglo-America…
Feminist Futures of Work
The future of work is at the centre of debates related to the emerging digital society. Concerns range from the inclusion, equity, and dignity of those at the far end of the value chain, who participate on and off platforms, often in the shadows, invisible to policymakers, designers, and consumers. Precarity and informality characterize this largely female workforce, across sectors ranging from artisanal work to salon services to ride hailing and…
Constructing the Digital
The AoIR Flashpoint Symposium conducted in Hyderabad, India, explored multiple facets of digital labour–that which takes place through and on platforms, monitored or managed via digital interfaces, as well as forms of work that contribute to building, maintaining, and populating digital infrastructures. The discussions at the symposium proceeded from the recognition of the need for regulation with the consumer of technology as our main object of …
Never Have I Ever felt super Indian
Never Have I Ever (NHIE) is a Netflix comedy-drama series centered around Devi Vishwakumar, a second-generation Indian-American teenager. While the show was praised for accurately portraying the experiences of young, second-generation Indian-American women, it was also criticized for its failure to subvert stereotypes, its caricaturization of Indian culture, as well as the erasure of caste in the show's narrative. In this article, we examine how …
Men in Beauty Work and Feminization of Digital Labor Platforms
Extant research on the gendered dynamics on digital labor platforms and care work is divided in terms of focus: (migrant) men involved in supposedly 'masculine' work such as driving and delivery, and home-based repair work, and the feminized invisible work performed by women in home-based care-work such as domestic work and beauty work. While such scholarship has merit, it completely dismisses the particularities of the South Asian context where …
Impact, feasibility, and acceptability of CREATORS
Background: Mental-health-related stigma prevents youth from seeking help for mental health problems. Limited studies in low- and middle-income countries assess the effect of arts-based education in reducing such stigma among youth, thereby leaving a gap in evidence-based, age- and culturally-appropriate interventions. Objective: To evaluate the impact, feasibility, and acceptability of CREATORS, an arts-based educational program on reducing ment…
A global communications standpoint
What does it mean, then, when we adopt and advocate a standpoint that is not tied to a single locus or body of experience, that in fact attempts to expand possibility rather than narrow it, that simultaneously values context while recognizing disconnection from it? What are the implications for thinking, teaching and doing, when the standpoint urges us to look outward and inward at the same time, demanding that we be rooted in the local even as w…
Feminist Futures of Work
The Frontlines and Margins
Among the many stories that emerged out of India during the pandemic, one was somewhat buried under the media discourse around the migrant crisis, lockdown regulations, and economic fallout. This was the story of striking accredited social health activist workers asking for fair wages, improved benefits, and better working conditions. The Covid-19 crisis highlighted the poor health infrastructure and the precarious, and often, stigmatized nature …
Gender Sensitisation for School Teachers
This article focuses on the role that teachers play in the gender socialisation of children in schools and how a change in teachers through gender sensitisation training is imperative to bring about larger gender equality in society. Educational institutions are among the primary traditional agencies of socialisation. Teachers are important members of both the school and the community and play a major role in shaping the attitudes and ideologies …
Everyday negotiations in managing presence
Young people’s lives are inextricably tied in with the digital, whether it is for education, engagement, leisure, or work. Studies from the Global North have examined children and social media from several perspectives, with discourse now veering towards a rights-based approach to foreground young people’s voices in a digital and social media world, something that is missing in countries like India. This paper drew on deep interactions with young…
Agency and servitude in platform labour
Digital labour platforms have become important sites of negotiation between expressions of micro-entrepreneurship, worker freedom and dignity of work. In the Global South, these negotiations are overlaid on an already fraught relationship mediated by the dynamics of caste and culture, to the usual politics of difference. Urban Company (UC), an app-based, on-demand platform in India that connects service providers offering home-based services to p…
Media Literacy, Social Connectedness, and Digital Citizenship in India
The ubiquity of digital and social media has led to considerable academic debate regarding their role in the lives of children and adolescents. The Global North, especially United States and Europe, has largely led this discussion in matters of research methods and approaches, as well as on conversations around screen time, wellbeing, media literacy, and digital citizenship. However, it is not clear to what extent and how these Anglo-Eurocentric …
Policing responses to crime against women
The widely discussed gang rape in December 2012 in New Delhi marked a significant moment in the public discourse around women’s safety and sexual violence in India. From expressions of shock and horror that marked the initial responses, the online and offline conversations quickly moved to the legal, social, and civic landscapes that encouraged what became referred to as “a culture of rape.” Responses from the state ranged from initiating legal r…
Indian millennials define feminism
Early feminist media research (1970 to mid-1990s), often described as the “embryonic” stage of the field (Margaret Gallagher 2001), focused on adding “women” to existing categories of social analys
Clinician-Patient Communication in a Glaucoma Clinic in India
We compiled data from nonparticipant observations of clinician-patient communication in clinical interactions in a tertiary care eye hospital in India. Applying elements of the French philosopher Michel Foucault's concept of power and knowledge, we deconstructed the structuring and moderating influences on the expert/nonexpert dyad. We found that clinicians enforce their "disciplining power" through varying degrees of communicativeness to bring a…
Agency and servitude in platform labour
Digital labour platforms have become important sites of negotiation between expressions of micro-entrepreneurship, worker freedom and dignity of work. In the Global South, these negotiations are overlaid on an already fraught relationship mediated by the dynamics of caste and culture, to the usual politics of difference. Urban Company (UC), an app-based, on-demand platform in India that connects service providers offering home-based services to p…
Clinician-Patient Communication in a Glaucoma Clinic in India
We compiled data from nonparticipant observations of clinician-patient communication in clinical interactions in a tertiary care eye hospital in India. Applying elements of the French philosopher Michel Foucault's concept of power and knowledge, we deconstructed the structuring and moderating influences on the expert/nonexpert dyad. We found that clinicians enforce their "disciplining power" through varying degrees of communicativeness to bring a…
Media Literacy, Social Connectedness, and Digital Citizenship in India
The ubiquity of digital and social media has led to considerable academic debate regarding their role in the lives of children and adolescents. The Global North, especially United States and Europe, has largely led this discussion in matters of research methods and approaches, as well as on conversations around screen time, wellbeing, media literacy, and digital citizenship. However, it is not clear to what extent and how these Anglo-Eurocentric …
Policing responses to crime against women
The widely discussed gang rape in December 2012 in New Delhi marked a significant moment in the public discourse around women’s safety and sexual violence in India. From expressions of shock and horror that marked the initial responses, the online and offline conversations quickly moved to the legal, social, and civic landscapes that encouraged what became referred to as “a culture of rape.” Responses from the state ranged from initiating legal r…
Men in Beauty Work and Feminization of Digital Labor Platforms
Extant research on the gendered dynamics on digital labor platforms and care work is divided in terms of focus: (migrant) men involved in supposedly 'masculine' work such as driving and delivery, and home-based repair work, and the feminized invisible work performed by women in home-based care-work such as domestic work and beauty work. While such scholarship has merit, it completely dismisses the particularities of the South Asian context where …
Gender Sensitisation for School Teachers
This article focuses on the role that teachers play in the gender socialisation of children in schools and how a change in teachers through gender sensitisation training is imperative to bring about larger gender equality in society. Educational institutions are among the primary traditional agencies of socialisation. Teachers are important members of both the school and the community and play a major role in shaping the attitudes and ideologies …
Clinician-Patient Communication in a Glaucoma Clinic in India
We compiled data from nonparticipant observations of clinician-patient communication in clinical interactions in a tertiary care eye hospital in India. Applying elements of the French philosopher Michel Foucault's concept of power and knowledge, we deconstructed the structuring and moderating influences on the expert/nonexpert dyad. We found that clinicians enforce their "disciplining power" through varying degrees of communicativeness to bring a…
Indian millennials define feminism
Early feminist media research (1970 to mid-1990s), often described as the “embryonic” stage of the field (Margaret Gallagher 2001), focused on adding “women” to existing categories of social analys
Policing responses to crime against women
The widely discussed gang rape in December 2012 in New Delhi marked a significant moment in the public discourse around women’s safety and sexual violence in India. From expressions of shock and horror that marked the initial responses, the online and offline conversations quickly moved to the legal, social, and civic landscapes that encouraged what became referred to as “a culture of rape.” Responses from the state ranged from initiating legal r…
Media Literacy, Social Connectedness, and Digital Citizenship in India
The ubiquity of digital and social media has led to considerable academic debate regarding their role in the lives of children and adolescents. The Global North, especially United States and Europe, has largely led this discussion in matters of research methods and approaches, as well as on conversations around screen time, wellbeing, media literacy, and digital citizenship. However, it is not clear to what extent and how these Anglo-Eurocentric …
Everyday negotiations in managing presence
Young people’s lives are inextricably tied in with the digital, whether it is for education, engagement, leisure, or work. Studies from the Global North have examined children and social media from several perspectives, with discourse now veering towards a rights-based approach to foreground young people’s voices in a digital and social media world, something that is missing in countries like India. This paper drew on deep interactions with young…
Agency and servitude in platform labour
Digital labour platforms have become important sites of negotiation between expressions of micro-entrepreneurship, worker freedom and dignity of work. In the Global South, these negotiations are overlaid on an already fraught relationship mediated by the dynamics of caste and culture, to the usual politics of difference. Urban Company (UC), an app-based, on-demand platform in India that connects service providers offering home-based services to p…
Feminist Futures of Work
The Frontlines and Margins
Among the many stories that emerged out of India during the pandemic, one was somewhat buried under the media discourse around the migrant crisis, lockdown regulations, and economic fallout. This was the story of striking accredited social health activist workers asking for fair wages, improved benefits, and better working conditions. The Covid-19 crisis highlighted the poor health infrastructure and the precarious, and often, stigmatized nature …
Gender Sensitisation for School Teachers
This article focuses on the role that teachers play in the gender socialisation of children in schools and how a change in teachers through gender sensitisation training is imperative to bring about larger gender equality in society. Educational institutions are among the primary traditional agencies of socialisation. Teachers are important members of both the school and the community and play a major role in shaping the attitudes and ideologies …
Impact, feasibility, and acceptability of CREATORS
Background: Mental-health-related stigma prevents youth from seeking help for mental health problems. Limited studies in low- and middle-income countries assess the effect of arts-based education in reducing such stigma among youth, thereby leaving a gap in evidence-based, age- and culturally-appropriate interventions. Objective: To evaluate the impact, feasibility, and acceptability of CREATORS, an arts-based educational program on reducing ment…
A global communications standpoint
What does it mean, then, when we adopt and advocate a standpoint that is not tied to a single locus or body of experience, that in fact attempts to expand possibility rather than narrow it, that simultaneously values context while recognizing disconnection from it? What are the implications for thinking, teaching and doing, when the standpoint urges us to look outward and inward at the same time, demanding that we be rooted in the local even as w…
Feminist Futures of Work
The future of work is at the centre of debates related to the emerging digital society. Concerns range from the inclusion, equity, and dignity of those at the far end of the value chain, who participate on and off platforms, often in the shadows, invisible to policymakers, designers, and consumers. Precarity and informality characterize this largely female workforce, across sectors ranging from artisanal work to salon services to ride hailing and…
Constructing the Digital
The AoIR Flashpoint Symposium conducted in Hyderabad, India, explored multiple facets of digital labour–that which takes place through and on platforms, monitored or managed via digital interfaces, as well as forms of work that contribute to building, maintaining, and populating digital infrastructures. The discussions at the symposium proceeded from the recognition of the need for regulation with the consumer of technology as our main object of …
Never Have I Ever felt super Indian
Never Have I Ever (NHIE) is a Netflix comedy-drama series centered around Devi Vishwakumar, a second-generation Indian-American teenager. While the show was praised for accurately portraying the experiences of young, second-generation Indian-American women, it was also criticized for its failure to subvert stereotypes, its caricaturization of Indian culture, as well as the erasure of caste in the show's narrative. In this article, we examine how …
Men in Beauty Work and Feminization of Digital Labor Platforms
Extant research on the gendered dynamics on digital labor platforms and care work is divided in terms of focus: (migrant) men involved in supposedly 'masculine' work such as driving and delivery, and home-based repair work, and the feminized invisible work performed by women in home-based care-work such as domestic work and beauty work. While such scholarship has merit, it completely dismisses the particularities of the South Asian context where …
Shortcuts and scholarship
Generative AI is changing not just how academic work gets done, but whether the processes that build genuine understanding are happening at all. This essay, written collaboratively by an early career researcher and a senior scholar in communication and media studies, argues that the real risk is not that AI will replace researchers, but that it will quietly erode the conditions under which researchers are formed, and indeed, what counts as resear…
Mainstreaming Decolonial Perspectives in Media and Communication
Over the past two decades, there have been many calls and efforts to decolonize and de-westernize research in media and communication (Aouragh & Chakravartty 2016; Couldry & Mejias 2019; Ricaurte 2019). While these efforts have generated valuable academic centers, community-driven projects, and South-to-South networks (e.g., CARGC, FemLab, Tierra Comun), the field is still dominated by (implicit) universalist perspectives. Often the Anglo-America…
Sociology (12 works) · Political science (9 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Public relations (5 works) · Engineering (4 works) · Social science (4 works) · Business (3 works) · Computer Science (3 works) · Digital Economy and Work Transformation (3 works)