My research examines how digital technologies become embedded in everyday life, governance, and public culture. Drawing on ethnographic research, I study welfare systems, platform economies, digital health, internet infrastructures, and visual culture. Questions that animate my work generally centre on how technologies are adopted, negotiated, gendered, repaired, and reimagined in practice. I am also building a digital archive of film fandom as expressed on the backs of autorickshaws in India to examine how vernacular visual forms of fandom differ from textual and video-based fan practices. I am interested in how autorickshaws produce distinctive visual cultures within everyday traffic. My work draws on Science and Technology Studies (STS), Infrastructure Studies, Human–Computer Interaction (HCI), and South Asian Studies.
I am currently a Maitri Fellow at the Australia India Institute, University of Melbourne, where I am writing about authentication as a socio-technical process through which identities and entitlements, are verified and governed, shaping substantive experiences of citizenship in India’s Aadhaar-enabled Public Distribution System. The fellowship is funded by the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and administered by the Centre for Australia–India Relations. I was also the inaugural Women in Tech Fellow (2024), awarded by the Australian Consulate-General in Bengaluru and the Australia India Institute.
My work has been supported by fellowships from The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy and grants from Google, the Azim Premji University Research Funding Program, and Mobile World Congress Barcelona.
I hold a bachelor’s degree in Commerce and a master’s degree in Communication Studies from the University of Pune, and a PhD in Communication Studies from The University of Texas at Austin. In what now seems like a previous life, I was a journalist with The Indian Express.
I can be reached at preeti [dot] mudliar [at] unimelb [dot] edu [dot] au
A note for students: I am always pleased to hear from people interested in Science and Technology Studies (STS), digital infrastructures, ethnographic research, Human–Computer Interaction, and related areas. I receive many emails from students seeking opportunities to contribute to ongoing projects, research direction, or reading recommendations. I appreciate the interest these messages reflect. At the same time, many of these requests are necessarily broad, making it difficult for me to offer meaningful guidance over email.
Many students who write to me come from engineering or computing backgrounds and hope to learn qualitative or ethnographic methods by contributing to a research project. While I understand the motivation behind these requests, I generally encourage students interested in this path to seek research training through a Master’s program or another setting that includes substantial coursework, fieldwork, and thesis research. Ethnography, and qualitative research more broadly, is best learned through sustained engagement rather than short-term projects. Meaningful mentorship develops through sustained work together over time. For this reason, I am unable to offer informal supervision or individualized mentoring in project work outside formal academic programs.
I also recognize that writing to someone itself can be daunting. Not everyone has had mentors who could explain the unwritten conventions of academic life and many questions about graduate school, research, academic writing, and qualitative methods are rarely addressed explicitly. I encourage you to explore some of the resources created by academics who have generously shared their experience. In particular, the late Raul Pacheco-Vega’s research blog addresses many of the questions students commonly have about graduate school, research, and academic writing. The Teaching section of this website also includes syllabi from courses I have designed and taught, with readings and assignments, which may provide a useful starting point for further exploration.
If, after exploring these resources, you have a specific question about my research or would like to discuss a particular paper, argument, or methodological issue, you are very welcome to write. There is no need for a polished email. A few sentences about yourself, your interests, what you have already explored, and the question you are hoping to discuss are more than enough.
Preeti Mudliar 