Rajinder Dudrah

Professor of Cultural Studies and Creative Industries

Email:
rajinder.dudrah@bcu.ac.uk
Phone:
0121 331 7280

Rajinder Dudrah is Professor of Cultural Studies and Creative Industries and served as the Interim Associate Dean for Research, Innovation and Enterprise in the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media at Birmingham City University (2021-22). He has also served as the University's AHRC-funded Midlands3Cities Doctoral Training Partnership Site Director, led the Creative Industries Research Cluster, and founded the Centre for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the Arts (CEDIA) acting as its first Director.

Rajinder joined Birmingham City University in 2016 and was previously Senior Lecturer in Screen Studies at the University of Manchester, where he held senior roles as Director of Centre for Screen Studies and Head of Dept of Drama (2007-2010).

In April 2023 Professor Dudrah was honoured by the South Asian Literary Association (USA), with the award of Distinguished Achievement in Scholarship to the Field of South Asian Studies.

He was appointed to serve at the criteria setting stage on Sub-panel 25: Area Studies of the Research Excellence Framework 2021 (REF2021), and as Outputs and Impact Assessor for Sub-panel 25, and Sub-panel 33: Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies.

In October 2016 Rajinder was elected as Visiting Scholar at Wolfson College, University of Oxford (2016 - 2018).

His undergraduate degree was in Cultural Studies at the University of Portsmouth (with specialisms in film and media studies, literature and cultural theory), followed by a PhD at the Dept. of Cultural Studies and Sociology, University of Birmingham. Before a Lectureship in Screen Studies at Manchester Rajinder was Research Fellow in Sociology at the University of Portsmouth. He also gained a PGCHE from the University of Portsmouth.

Rajinder's academic interests are in the areas of film, media, cultural studies, and creative industries including: Bollywood cinema, Black British representation, popular music, diasporic and transnational media, television studies, and in cultural theory and qualitative research methods as applied to popular culture and creative industries research.

Rajinder has taught across the range of core undergraduate and postgraduate courses concerned with screen theory and aesthetics, screen methods, and screen texts and audiences.He particularly draws on interdisciplinary approaches from Film and Media Studies, Cultural Studies, and Sociology to think about the development of screen theory and how best to analyse the relationship between screen industries, texts and audiences.

His doctorate work was a combined extended qualitative interview and textual analysis of the popular cultural texts of British Bhangra music, Bollywood films, and the non-terrestrial Zee TV channel as they are used by British Asian audiences in processes of social identity formation.

Rajinder is also one of the founders and co-editors of the internationally peer reviewed journal South Asian Popular Culture with Routledge publishers.

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