My research sits at the intersection of media, culture, and society, with a particular emphasis on the entanglements of digital media, race, and ethnicity. At its core, my work examines how cultural imaginaries, power structures, and historical legacies influence everyday interactions with media. My current research investigates how diverse societies perceive, navigate, and contest the realities of misinformation. Rather than treating mis/disinformation as isolated or purely technical phenomena, I approach them as deeply embedded within socio-cultural, economic, and political formations that reflect and reproduce inequalities across communities and geographies.

Drawing on mixed methods, including ethnographic inquiry, participatory action research, and critical discourse analysis, I examine the complex scenarios through which falsehoods travel, transform, and take root in everyday practices. This work is not limited to diagnosis alone. I am equally committed to co-developing strategies, tools, and interventions that are attuned to the cultural and linguistic specificities of multicultural communities, enabling them to resist harmful narratives and repair communication ecologies within intimate and public spheres.

My approach to disinformation is global in scope yet grounded in critical traditions of socio-anthropological and cultural studies. I am particularly attentive to how questions of power, rooted in histories of empire, institutional inequality, and global capitalism, shape disinformation landscapes. My scholarship aligns with and contributes to transnational and Global South perspectives that resist Eurocentric frames, instead emphasising the layered, intersectional, and historically contingent nature of contemporary media crises.

More broadly, my intellectual commitments are informed by decolonial thought and critical theory. I am interested in how knowledge production, media infrastructures, and ideological systems intertwine to perpetuate marginalisation, and in how alternative epistemologies and resistant practices emerge from subjugated and diasporic communities. In this vein, my work seeks not only to analyse but also to unsettle dominant paradigms, embracing a politically engaged and ethically grounded scholarship.

I collaborate closely with civil society actors, policymakers, and local communities to ensure that research intervenes in lived realities. 

Currently, I teach media and broadcast studies to both undergraduate and postgraduate students at the School of Arts, Media and Languages.

Module Convenor for:

BCP1003 - Broadcast Analysis II for UG students

BCP2006 - Media Audiences for UG students

BCP3007 - Media & Misinformation for UG students

BCP7016 - Media in Times of Crisis for PG students

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From 2021 to 2023, I taught digital media studies at the School of Communications, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia. 

From 2017 to 2021, I worked as a Sessional Academic at the School of Social Sciences, Western Sydney University. During this tenure, I taught multiple online and on-campus units and also worked as an assistant course coordinator and guest lecturer.

From 2006 to 2008, I served as a Faculty member in media and communication studies at the AMC Institute in Bangalore, India. During this tenure, I taught both undergraduate and postgraduate students in media and communication studies and also supervised postgraduate degree thesis projects.

In 2025, my debut non-academic non-fiction book proposal was long-listed for the 2025 Ideas Prize (in partnership with Profile Books and Aitken Alexander Associates), distinguishing it among the many submissions for its originality, clarity of argument, and capacity to engage both scholarly peers and wider publics. 

In 2024, I received a Fellowship from the Higher Education Academy in recognition of excellence in teaching, learning support and enhancing the student experience, through demonstrated commitment to the UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF). 

In 2024, I published my debut academic book titled TEDified Islam: Postsecular Storytelling in New Media got published by the Palgrave MacMillan. TEDified Islam is the first in-depth analysis of TED’s discourse and knowledge production on faith in general and Islam in particular, and a comprehensive study of TED Talks on religion by analysing the text, audiences and producers.

Prior to joining the Queen’s, I worked at Western Sydney University and University Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia, in both research and teaching capacities.

From 2021 to 2023, I worked as a Post-doctoral Researcher at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, on two Australian Research Council (ARC) projects in different capacities. The first project, Advancing Digital Inclusion in Low-income Australian Families, conducted a national-level ethnographic investigation to examine the complex relationship between digital and social inclusion and social infrastructure’s role (education facilities, charities, government services) in supporting low-income families. The second project, Heritage-making among recent migrants in Parramatta, studied the place-making and meaning-making practices with existing heritage sites in Parramatta. In 2022, I was involved as a Chief Investigator (CI) in developing an industry-partnership research project that examined trust and considered how this shapes behaviours during critical events (e.g., election campaigning, extraordinary enforcement/compliance measures against population segments).

In 2022, I was invited by the Institute for Culture and Society to co-lead their research and engagement program – Platform for Civic Media Literacy. The initiatives in this platform aim to tackle challenges that are entangled with digital media and information infrastructures and business models, including misinformation, digital exclusion, media bias and political polarisation. The platform also seeks to investigate problems that emerge because of poor and inappropriate media and technology design, distribution, and regulation, including misinformation, digital exclusion, political polarisation, media bias and racism.

In 2021, I graduated with a PhD in Media and Cultural Studies from the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University. I also hold a Master’s in Communication Studies and a B.Sc. in Computer Science.

Using an interdisciplinary approach to examine the interconnection between media, religion, and popular culture, my PhD research examined the discursive features and communication strategies of TED Talks on Islam. This is the first-ever comprehensive study to explore the communication features of TED Talks on faith that emerge at the nexus of the sacred and secular within a popular media space.

Both nationally and internationally, I am a core contributor to cross-sector and knowledge-brokering initiatives that are instrumental in understanding and addressing issues relating to social justice, migration, Muslim subjectivities, and media practices. Internationally, for example, I am associated with several Indian organisations working in the space of counter-misinformation. These projects assert the need to bring activists, journalists, and scholars from the social sciences, media, statistics, and computer science to study how to bridge India’s partisan divide.

I have received national and international recognition for my studies and work, as evidenced by my numerous publications in peer-reviewed journals, scholarships, conference participation, and professional memberships.