A.J.K. Mass Communication Research Centre

Shohini Ghosh is Sajjad Zaheer Professor at the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia (Central University), New Delhi where she has taught from 1990. She has been Director (Offg.) of the AJKMCRC (February 2019- September 2023) and has been Director of Jamia’s Premchand Archives & Literary Centre (September 2023-Septemver 2025). She has earned her PhD in Cinema Studies from the School of Arts & Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; MPS in Communication Studies from the Department of Communication Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca NY and MA in Mass Communication from MCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia.

Ghosh has been Visiting Professor at a number of international universities including the Department of Communication, Cornell University, USA (1990-1996); Globalization-McArthur Fellow at the University of Chicago, Fellow at the Gender, Sexuality and Law Research Group of the Law Department at Keele University, UK; the Summer Institute on Sexuality, Culture and Society at the International School for Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Department of South Asian Studies, University of Texas at Austin, USA and James P. Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Ghosh’s longstanding area of interest is the study of media in relation to gender and sexuality rights. She has had a two-decade long association with CREA’s Sexuality, Gender and Rights Program.

Ghosh’s independent documentary Tales of the Night Fairies (2002) makes an important intervention in the debate for decriminalization of sex work. The feature length documentary continues to be used extensively by academics, activists and sex worker groups. The documentary has been screened at Festivals in Australia, USA, UK, Canada, The Netherlands, China, Korea, Mexico, Croatia, South Africa, Thailand, Hong Kong and Brazil.  It was one of the four Indian documentaries to be selected by CNEX channels in China for video streaming for a month in 2012 on site Baidu.com. Ghosh is the author of Fire: A Queer Film Classic published by Arsenal Pulp Press, Vancouver in 2010 and reprinted by Orient Publishing, Delhi in 2011. The book is part of the Queer Classics Series edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays.

Ghosh is an essayist whose research interests include History, Theory and the Practice of Independent Documentary Films; Fiction, Non-Fiction & Hybrid films; Bombay/Bollywood Cinema; Gender, Sexuality and the Media;  Speech and Censorship; Stardom Studies, Action Cinema & Cinema of the Senses.  Ghosh’s academic publications can be accessed at https://jamiamilliaislamia.academia.edu/ShohiniGhosh

Currently Ghosh is Principle Applicant/ Project Lead for Marginal Histories: The Founding of Jamia Millia Islamia and India’s Struggle for Independence- a digitization project funded by Arcadia and the British Library’s Endangered Archives Project (EAP) Grant