01/07/2026
Prof. Kanchan K. Malik assumes charge as Dean, SN School of Arts and Communication.
We are delighted to announce that Prof. Kanchan K. Malik has assumed charge as Dean, Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication, University of Hyderabad, with effect from 1st July 2026, for a three-year term. She becomes the 6th faculty member from the Department of Communication to be appointed Dean of the School since its inception in 1988.
A homegrown scholar of the University, Prof. Malik completed her PhD from the very Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad she has gone on to shape as a teacher, researcher, and mentor. She has been a faculty member there for nearly two decades and served as Head of the Department (2017–20).
Her scholarship lies at the intersection of community media, communication for social change, and the public sphere, with a sustained focus on community radio policy and practice in the global South — a field she has engaged with since her doctoral research. Her work foregrounds participatory communication and examines how community-led, civil-society-driven media enable voice, inclusion, and locally grounded knowledge production. Across her research on gender in grassroots media, participatory evaluation of communication initiatives, and voice infrastructures, one thread runs constant: a commitment to media that widen who gets to speak and be heard.
Now the Chairholder of the UNESCO Chair on Community Media, and a Faculty Fellow of the Chair since 2011, Prof. Malik has led several of its most influential initiatives — from the widely used Community Radio Continuous Improvement Toolkit to capacity-building and policy advocacy across India, South Asia, Africa, and Europe. More recently, she anchored the Chair's projects on a gender-sensitivity manual for community radios and a handbook on indigenous languages and community radio.
She is the author and editor of much-cited work in the field, including Other Voices: The Struggle for Community Radio in India (Sage, 2007) and the co-edited Community Radio in South Asia: Reclaiming the Airwaves (Routledge, 2020), alongside UNESCO manuals on strengthening gender-sensitive practices and promoting indigenous languages through community radio. Her research has consistently asked how women negotiate and navigate deep-rooted barriers to gender equality, and how community communication can open new spaces for empowerment.
A former journalist with The Economic Times before turning to academics, she brings over 25 years of experience in teaching, research, and mentoring, and was a Fulbright-Nehru Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin (2022–2023).
Please join us in congratulating Prof. Kanchan K. Malik on this well-deserved appointment. We look forward to the School flourishing under her leadership.
The Fulbright Program Kanchan K. Malik
