Professor Shakuntala Banaji is Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE, where she also serves as Director of Graduate Studies and Programme Director for the MSc Media, Communication and Development.
She lectures on International Media and the Global South, Film theory and World Cinema, and Critical Approaches to Media, Communication and Development.
Shakuntala, did you always intend to go into academia? If not, what made you pursue a career in this field?
No I really didn’t! But I was always attracted to teaching and to education. When I was five I’m told that I was teaching my younger brother to read. By the time I left primary school I knew I would train to be a teacher – and as soon as I could, that’s exactly what I did. During the 1990s I had the most wonderful and exhausting time teaching children and young people from 11-18 a whole range of English and Media Studies. I taught thousands of children over those years and most of them were so sparky, so delightful, and also quite vulnerable, and the discussions we had remain with me to this day. Some of my early students are now dear friends who teach or work in the media or in trade unions. However, when Education in schools started to be destroyed by government surveillance and over-testing, I decided I needed to change direction or I’d lose all my joy. So I did a PhD which allowed me to watch people and films … and ended up accidentally in academia 20 years ago. And now I love my research, my teaching and my students here so much I can’t imagine doing anything else.
What made you interested in media and communications and specifically the area you research?
I grew up without a television, with virtually no media technology, not even a telephone and often short of food – but I did get taken to the cinema and that was an absolute delight. I was surrounded by adults working against social injustice on the streets, in feminist groups and in factories. I’ve never thought of it like this before, but it’s no surprise that I now research children, young people, media and global injustice. So almost every subject I research – misinformation and hate speech, or young people and climate change, or film and politics – has some combination of these issues at play.
What advice they would you give students who are thinking of pursuing a PhD/career in academia?
Find a subject that you love so much that you won’t be bored for four years! Find an advisor who is known to be kind, compassionate and a good teacher, not just one who has a reputation for scholarly brilliance or arrogance. Build a rapport with your subject, and with your potential supervisor. And don’t be frightened to change your mind, to ask questions that might make you seem ignorant, or to admit that you were wrong about something in your initial proposal. Then look again around you, and ask yourself if you are willing to put in the hours, the lonely reading and writing time, the hard grind of data collection, the frustrations of low paid teaching and research jobs maybe for years, the restrictions of different university systems, all while remaining connected and compassionate, and fighting injustices in the system in which you’re trying to make it. If the answer is yes, you’re all set.
What was the main issue of the day in terms of media and communications when you were a student? How has it developed?
In the subject area I was working in – film and audiences – the main issues of the day seemed to centre around questions of audience subjectivity and agency and the power of texts to structure our thinking and behaviours. the ‘active’ audience was definitely in, as was the notion of a post-structural self where identities are considered to be chosen, overlapping and flexible; but so were the incompatible notions of ‘overwhelming effects’ and ‘media violence’. Where is the room for agency and negotiation of meaning if all texts are telling us how to think and have overwhelming effects? But if we’re all agentic and free in our choices, how come so many people share so many terrible, oppressive beliefs, ideological practices and values? These are debates that are still running today, albeit modified by the whole new world of the internet and social media. For a while I was almost seduced into rejecting the notion of hegemonic effects: it seemed so much more optimistic to think that most viewers are critical and flexible and active in how we interpret media. Now, studying hate-speech, violence and lynching, I’m returning to some of the sentimental nationalist film texts I viewed and analysed with audiences two decades ago, and I’m beginning to understand how fascist discourses about class, gender and religion in these seemingly pleasurable texts set the scene for mob lynchings and dehumanisation of entire communities in WhatsApp messages. There isn’t a relationship of direct effects: but that’s not how hegemony works. The question is, what factors and processes – social, mediated, personal – enable some people to remain critical, compassionate and question these hegemonic ideologies of hate circulating in their families, on WhatsApp and in the mainstream media?
What do you think is the most important contemporary issue in the field of media and communications, both for soon to graduate students and for long time professionals in the field?
How to deal with corporate and authoritarian influence on and in the media (including data theft and surveillance) leading to the toppling of egalitarian and socialist politicians and the growth of fascism; misogyny, and racist/religious hate speech linked to manufactured disinformation and violence against refugees and minorities; and climate change – which includes both information, and the need to think critically about the burden that new technologies are placing on all aspects of the earth we inhabit. My two upcoming projects – a book on hate-speech and misinformation and a multi-country study on young people’s responses to climate change and the media’s representations of climate change and youth climate activists – are both trying to deal with these issues.
What do you enjoy most about teaching students and why?
This could be a very long list since I enjoy hundreds of things about teaching and about my students! I adore their enthusiasm, am passionate about getting to know them as individuals and the ways they think and feel about the world, hearing their stories about the cultural milieus in which they grew up and the traumas or joys they encountered, and allowing them to connect to each other in ways that will help them to have lasting friendships across all kinds of cultural barriers. It gives me joy listening to their experiences of life, learning and society, having a laugh with them about the absurdities of life and some forms of academic writing. But above all I love encountering or kindling the fire within them, especially amongst those who want to change social injustices, helping them to get more in touch with affective aspects of learning and of themselves, challenging their prejudices and having them challenge mine, introducing them to a theory or concept that will go on to be the building block for a whole system of thinking about the world and seeing them also able to question or critique this set of ideas. Along the way, the perks are watching and discussing films with them, seeing their writing develop and change, being present at moments of spiritual or emotional epiphany and pain; caring for them and having their care and love for me and my folks expressed repeatedly and clearly, learning how to say goodbye and wish them well on their way in the world – and then reconnecting with them as colleagues, friends, collaborators. It is truly a blessing to be a teacher.
What do you like doing when you’re not busy being an academic?
Well…looking after a toddler and caring for a teenager is a second full-time job…but I read fiction voraciously, have published a suspense/crime novel and am trying to turn this into a film script with a childhood friend of mine so we can make it into a film and/or a mini-series! Anyone out there want to fund us?