I am currently a Maitri Fellow at the Australia India Institute, University of Melbourne. My work 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 for 2024 awarded by the Australian Consulate Bengaluru and the Australia India Institute.
My research examines how digital public infrastructures reshape experiences of citizenship, welfare, and everyday life in India. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research on Aadhaar-enabled biometric authentication in India’s public distribution system (PDS), I study how infrastructural breakdowns, failures, and repair practices shape access to food security and welfare. More broadly, I am interested in authentication as a socio-technical process through which identities, entitlements, and everyday activities are verified and governed. My work draws on Science and Technology Studies, Infrastructure Studies, Human Computer Interaction, and South Asian Studies.
Alongside my research on digital infrastructures, I am also studying visual and material cultures in urban and small-town India. This work began when, as a two-wheeler commuter in Bangalore, I started building a digital archive of film fandom expressed through autorickshaw art. My interest in Hindi films and fandom and my experiences of traffic led me to think about autos as forms of urban mobility that produce visual culture and aestheticise the experience of traffic. I have since expanded this work into a larger project that also includes visual practices such as kolam and mehendi as forms of ephemeral visual art practiced by women in domestic spaces that while central to everyday life, receive marginal attention as serious practices of art. This work is supported by an unrestricted grant from Google that I received in 2024 to research visual art and emerging technologies. I am currently collaborating with Aruvu Collaboratory, Bangalore to develop the project.
Previously, I was a faculty member at IIIT Bangalore from 2016–2025, where I taught courses on Qualitative Research Methods and Human-Computer Interaction, guiding students through immersive ethnographic and design research practices. Design work developed with my students on mobile hotspot affordances in smartphones was recognised by Samsung Research and Development India Bangalore (SRIB) and later implemented in Samsung smartphones globally.
In collaboration with my research students, I co-founded and supervised the IIIT Bangalore ACM SIGCHI Student Chapter from 2023–2025. I am also a member of the Asia SIGCHI subcommittee and served as Vice-Chair from 2024–2025.
My research 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. Prior to joining IIIT Bangalore, I was a researcher with the Human Interactions group at Xerox Research Centre India, Bangalore.
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
Preeti Mudliar 