Professor Shakuntala Banaji

Professor Banaji obtained a first for her Bachelor's in Philosophy and Literature from the University of Warwick; a Postgraduate Certificate of Education from Goldsmiths College, University of London, a distinction in her MA English Studies in Education and a PhD in Media and Communication from the Institute of Education, University of London (now UCL), where she worked as a lecturer and researcher from 2004-2010.

Before entering academia, she was a teacher of English and Media Studies in London schools through the 1990s, head of media, and an advisory teacher at the English and Media Centre. Previously she has been Lead Researcher on the project 'Creativity and Innovation in European Schools' which she won jointly with Futurelab Bristol, for the European Union's Institute of Prospective Technological Studies; she was UK Research Officer on the seven-country European Union funded project Civicweb: Young People, Civic Participation and the Internet (2006-2009) for which the Institute of Education was lead partner; and she produced a review of literature outlining Rhetorics of Creativity (2005-2006) for Creative Partnerships.

Professor Shakuntala Banaji was Principal Investigator for DSITS Media Literacy Programme on a project entitled Common Sense Media ‘Digital Citizenship Evaluation’, a collaboration with the global charity Common Sense who provide free and cutting edge digital resources for schools and parents. Prior to this she was Principal Investigator of one of the twenty WhatsApp social science misinformation grants (2018-2020). This project, with Ram Bhat, entitled WhatsApp Vigilantes: An exploration of citizen reception and construction of WhatsApp messages’ triggering mob violence in India outlined typologies of fake news, misinformation, disinformation and hate speech that circulate on WhatsApp and other social media apps and platforms in India, and which have created a climate that either leads to or legitimises violence against already vulnerable citizens. In addition, it examined the possibility of a typology of users who are more or less likely to be responsible for passing on false information. Continuing this research, Banaji and Bhat researched histories of hate and the dehumanisation, violence and hate targeted at minorities and marginalised social groups in Brazil, India, Myanmar and the UK with a focus on the lived experience of users of social media who are the recipients of violence, discrimination, systematic disinformation and hostility and the possibilities for short, medium and long-term legal, political, technological and educational solutions. This research was published in the book Social Media and Hate (Routledge, 2022).

Previously completed research projects include the European Commission Horizon 2020 Young 5a funded project, - Constructing Active Citizenship with European youth: policies, practices, challenges and solutions, which investigates media constructions, participatory practices and policy visions of youth active citizenship. Her edited book on this project with Sam Mejias, Youth Active Citizenship in Europe: Ethnographies of Participation was out with Palgrave in 2020. She was also Principal Investigator on Personalised Media and Participatory Culture (2015-2018) in collaboration with American University Sharjah, funded by the LSE Middle East centre's academic collaboration with Arab Universities Programme. Both projects shed light on the tensions and connections between rhetorics of citizenship or digital connectivity, and the actual barriers, networks, enablers and spaces of youth participation in civic and political life.

Prof. Banaji’s longstanding research interests include media literacy, digital technologies and disinformation, social change, democracy and fascism, the socio-political contexts of young people and audiences more broadly, the meaning, history and textual study of cinema, particularly International and South Asian media and Hindi films (aka Bollywood), representations of children, child labour and child rights, with a specific focus on South Asia and low income contexts in the global south, critical approaches to pedagogy, media education, communication and development, the crisis of humanitarianism, politically and socially innovative development projects, environmental degradation through capitalist extraction, environmental concern and anxiety amongst youth, news reception, tensions between popular and elite media, AI-based bias, GenAI and internet cultures, online civic participation (including misinformation and disinformation circulated online to provoke misogyny, racism, transphobia and civic unrest), young people and cultural identities. Her research focuses on people's interactions with media genres and technologies both old and new, and the ways in which interactions between childhood, youth, media, representation and group identities have been theorised in diverse philosophical, political, cultural and social contexts.

A selection of Prof. Banaji blogs arising from this research can be found on her publications page, including Biological essentialism cannot deliver safety or justice. (30 Apr 2025);

Totalitarian tech? Billionaires, hate and the undermining of social media integrity. (17 Jan 2025);

On killing children. With Gazal Shekhawat (30 May 2024); When research, activism and art meet: a conversation with filmmaker Somnath Waghmare. (13 Oct 2023); A hierarchy of hate. Media@LSE (02 Aug 2023) and Cancel culture and historical silencing (20 Jun 2021).

Her book Children and Media in India (Routledge 2017) is based on original interviews and observations with diverse children and families, as well as media producers and NGO staff in India over the past decade. In particular, this book re-theorises agency from a subaltern and global south perspective and examines the ways in which children from different regions in India, social classes and backgrounds experience, participate in and make meaning from old and new media, school, local cultures and labour; the ways in which their lives in these arena are understood, represented and theorised in South Asia and the West; and the ways in which common theorisations of 'the digital', 'agency', and childhood serve to silence or elevate the interests of particular groups of children.

Previous research on online civic participation is available in The Civic Web co-authored with David Buckingham and on democracy and citizenship in Youth Participation in Democratic Life co-authored with Cammaerts, Bruter, Harrison and Anstead. of these six years of research can also be found amongst Prof. Banaji’s online publications; and in a video explanation about online hate made for LSE’s research series here; a conversation about representation, hate and combatting racism for the Sarah Redmond Centre podcast series; a discussion on Al-Jazeera’s about the concept of Cancel culture; a Tedx talk given at the University of Hasselt, Belgium; in discussion with Professor Connor Gearty: ‘What does it Mean to be a Citizen?’; and one with David Buckingham, Citizenship and media education in contested times. The Civic Web, arose from EU Framework 6 funded research with young people and online civic producers across Europe and Turkey, examining technological tools for participation and links between online and offline civic participation, motivation, interactivity, context as well as national institutional responses.

Prof. Banaji was a contributor to the 46-country World Hobbit Project, January 2013-December 2015. This remains the biggest audience research project of all time, with more than 35,000 responses to the questionnaire! This project builds on previous audience research work in relation to comparative audience reception of film, offering a fresh dataset with which to theorise the changing relationship of international films and audiences.

Postgraduate teaching

Professor Banaji has been teaching for thirty years and cannot imagine a profession that would suit her more. In addition to her duties as Programme Director for the MSc Media, Communication and Development, Professor Banaji also convenes the postgraduate courses MC407 International Media and the Global South, MC421 Critical Approaches to Media, Communication and Development and MC426 Film Theory and World Cinema. She has also convened and jointly taught on the popular short course at Bachelor's year 2 level Global Communications, Citizens and Cultural Politics.

With a profound interest in the ethics of researching children, childhood, vulnerable populations, violence and online environments, Professor Banaji was a member of the LSE’s Research Ethics Committee (now the Research Ethics Review Board) for seven years and was also, for some of that time, the Chair of this committee.

Professor Banaji additionally contributes lectures to team-taught postgraduate Media and Communications courses relating to theories and research methodologies with a particular focus on research ethics, race and racism, postcolonial theory and audiovisual analysis.

Between 2010 to 2013, Professor Banaji was convenor of the Department's Master's dissertation course and from 2017 to 2020 she was the Director of Graduate Studies, with direction and oversight for all MSc teaching delivery across the Department.

Professor Banaji is winner of the fourth European Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Social Sciences and Humanities, and the Diener Prize, awarded by Central European University, Budapest, Hungary. She is also the winner of the 2015 LSESU Award for Outstanding Contributions to Teaching. Prizes and nominations include the 2025 (Dedicated Dissertation Supervisor), 2023 (Inclusive Teaching), 2019 and 2011 LSE and LSE Students' Union Teaching Excellence Award for which she was also nominated in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2024. In 2013 she was awarded of one of the prestigious LSE Major Review Teaching Prizes and has been awarded LSE Excellence in Education prizes in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023.

Doctoral supervision

Professor Banaji supervises doctoral research on topics ranging from democratic and anti-democratic participation, new media, disinformation and hate online, citizenship, race, gender, ethnicity and media, audiences, film, Global geopolitics, European and South Asian politics and critical development projects, to children, young people, visual analysis, and histories of struggle, justice and injustice. Previous doctoral students’ projects include Dr Fatma Khan on affect and reflexivity amongst minoritised citizens in India, Dr Ruhi Khan on Media, Feminism and Technology in Postcolonial Contexts, Dr Husseina Umayma Ahmed’s Northern Nigerian women beyond the Boko Haram conflict, Dr Benjamin De-La-Pava-Velez’ ‘Film viewers’ relationships to commodification of love and romance on screen’, Dr Yanning Huang’s ‘Satirical memes and discourses of gender and sexuality on the Chinese Internet’ and Dr Ramnath Bhat’s ‘The politics of digital infrastructure in India’.

Professor Banaji's current doctoral supervisees include Gazal Shekhawat, Hao Wang, Limichi Okamoto, Saumyadeep Mandal, Subhajit Sikdar, Vashan Brown, Zichen Hu, Ziwei Tang, Kristeena Monteith, Anahita Masters, Vaibhav Chopra, Basit Paray and Dhwani. Other second and co-supervisees who have completed successfully include Amir Bashti Monfared, Dr Canan Salih, Dr Ronggang Chen, Dr Aichen Zhang, Dr Ziyan Wang, Dr Xiaoxi Zhu, Dr Rafal Zaborowski and Dr Rahoul Masrani.

Professor Banaji is on the editorial boards of the journals Javnost – The Public, Communication and Race, International Journal of Cultural Studies andCommunication, Culture and Critique. She is currently co-editor of the Media, Entertainment and Sport volume of the Oxford Intersections: Racism by Context (2023-2027) and a member of the ESRC Digital Good College of Experts. Professor Banaji was conference co-chair of the 72^nd Annual International Communication Association 2022 (ICA) Conference in Paris. From 2012-2020, she was lead editor for Anthem Press book series, Global Media and Communication.

Professor Banaji has been an expert consultant for Media Development NGO Internews project in India, Kenya and Brazil with regard to media representations and popular understandings of child rights in India. She has guest-lectured and delivered symposia and keynotes in Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Estonia, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, the Philippines, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, the US and the UK, including plenary keynotes at IAMCR2016 and MeccSa 2017. She has been a longstanding member of the London Screen Studies Group, and convened several symposia and doctoral conferences with colleagues there.

Professor Banaji has served as an external examiner on the BA Education and Social Science, St. Mary's University (2012-2015); She was a member of the International Centre for Education for Democratic Citizenship, (Birkbeck and Institute of Education). She has acted as internal and external examiner on doctoral work about race and representation, film and television audience imaginaries and studies, online hate and disinformation, journalism, nationalism, representation, youth, gender, work, and media.

Professor Banaji serves as a reviewer for multiple governmental and non-governmental research grant organisations and for more than thirty academic journals. She has provided expert evidence about combatting hate and disinformation and on the growth of religious and racial intolerance to several international bodies and has provided evidence to support anti-hate, online safety and trust policies, media literacy and fact checking work of multiple non-profit groups and media organisations including the NSPCC, OFCOM, the UK Parliament, UNESCO and META.