I am a Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Associated Faculty at the Educational Technology Services Centre at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. I was formerly a Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. I am the author of A History of the Jana Natya Manch: Plays For the People, Freedom from Profit: Eschewing Copyright in Resistance Art and an annotated translation of Bijon Bhattacharya’s Nabanna (with a critical introduction).
Contact Information
Tel:+91-11-2659 7316(O)
arjunghosh[at]hss.iitd.ac.in
Research Areas
Digital Humanities
Performance Studies
Technology in Society
(prospective applicants for the PhD programme - please check my website for details)
Employment History
- 2021–: Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Delhi
- 2014–2021: Associate Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Delhi
- 2011–2014: Assistant Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Delhi
- 2010—2011: Assistant Professor at the Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi
- 2005–2010: Assistant Professor at the Department of English, Shivaji College, University of Delhi
- 2002–2005: Ad Hoc/ Temporary Lecturer in English in various colleges, University of Delhi
Publications
Books
Arjun Ghosh, Angelie Multani, Swati Pal, Nandini Saha and Albeena Shakil eds. From Canon to Covid: Transforming Literary Studies in India. Routledge India, 2023.
Bijon Bhattacharya Nabanna: Of Famine and Resilience (translated and introduced by Arjun Ghosh) New Delhi: Rupa Publications, 2018.
Freedom from Profit: Eschewing Copyright in Resistance Art Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 2014.
A History of the Jana Natya Manch: Plays for the People New Delhi: Sage India, 2012.
Book Chapters
“Visualizing the cultural history of South Asia” in Maya Dodd and Nirmala Menon eds. Practices of Digital Humanities in India: Learning by doing (Digital Humanities Asia Series). Routledge India. 2024.
“The Experience of the Left Cultural Movement in India: 1942 to the Present” in Paul McGarr and Ruth Maxey eds. India at 70: Multidisciplinary Approaches Routledge, 2019.
“In a Fresh Hue: An Adaptation of Chaturanga” in Maryrose Casey ed. Embodying Transformation: Transcultural Performance. Sydney, Monash University Press, 2015.
“The Politics and Methods of Epic Theatre” in Swati Pal ed. Modern European Drama: Ibsen to Beckett. New Delhi, Pencraft, 2012.
Essays
“Recovering knowledge commons for the global south” Journal of the Digital Humanities Association of Southern Africa (DHASA) Vol. 5 No. 1 (2024): Digital Humanities for Inclusion
UTRNet: High-Resolution Urdu Text Recognition In Printed Documents Chetan Arora Abdur Rahman, Arjun Ghosh. 17th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR 2023). [Springer Link].
“Resistance to Neo-liberal Economy and the Life of a Play: The Jana Natya Manch and Theatre Activism” in Theatre Research International. Vol. 47 Issue 3. October 2022.
“Using N-grams to identify edit wars on Wikipedia” in 2019 IEEE Fifth International Conference on Multimedia Big Data (BigMM). pp. 398-403 DOI: 10.1109/BigMM.2019.00021
“Censorship through Copyright: From print to digital media” in Social Scientist vol. 41. nos. 1-2 January-February 2013
“Challenges, Innovations and Commitment: Cultural Intervention and Cultural Resistance” in Economic and Political Weekly VOL 46 No. 24 June 11 – June 17, 2011.
“Performing Change/ Changing Performance: An Exploration of the Life of a Street Play by the Jana Natya Manch” in Asian Theatre Journal vol. 27, no. 1 (2010).
“Theatre for the Ballot: The Use of Street Theatre for Campaigning in the Indian Elections”, The Drama Review Winter 2005, Vol. 49, No. 4 (T188).
“‘Meanings’ of the Revolution: Language in the Street Plays of the Jana Natya Manch” in Language Forum (Jul-Dec 2004).
[Republished in Sudhanva Deshpande ed. Theatre of the Streets New Delhi, Jana Natya Manch, 2007.]
“How Far Radical?: Middle Class Politics, Youth and Women in the Literature of Bengal during National Liberation” in the Journal of the School of Languages (Spring 2005).
Other Writings
Study Material:
Online Course material on Vijay Tendulkar’s Ghashiram Kotwal, for the Institute of Life Long Learning, University of Delhi.
Encyclopedia Entry:
‘Tamasha’ in Rukmini Bhaya Nair and Peter Ronald DeSouza eds. Keywords for India: A Conceptual Lexicon for the 21st Century. Bloomsbury, 2020.
Neela Dabir and From Street to Hope: Faith Based and Secular Programs in Los Angeles, Mumbai and Nairobi for Street Living Children published in The Book Review Vol. 36 No. 7. Jul 2012.
Lata Singh ed. Theatre in Colonial India: Play-House of Power. New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2009, in History and Sociology of South Asia Vol. 5 No. 1, January 2011.
Rajeev S. Patke Postcolonial Poetry in English (Oxford Studies in Postcolonial Literatures in English). New York, Oxford University Press, 2006, published in Postcolonial Text Vol. 3 No. 3 (2007).
Pradeep Trikha. Multiple Celebrations, Celebrating Multiplicity: Girish Karnad. Ajmer, A.R.A.W.LII. Publications, 2009, published in Summer Hill: IIAS Review, Vol. XV No. 1 Summer 2009.
Conferences
Conference Papers
- “Challenging new hegemonies: Developing digital tools for the South” at the ADHO Digital Humanities Conference 2024 held at George Mason University, Washington DC on 6-9 August 2024.
- “Studying changes in English Literature curriculum in India using digital analysis” at the International Conference on Teaching English Literature and Interdisciplinarity organised by East West University and Association of Teachers of Literatures in English, Bangladesh on 28-29 July 2003.
- “Reforming the ‘Eng Lit’ canon: Measuring the myths and realities of English literary studies in India through a computational analysis of university curriculum”, Digital Humanities 2022, Tokyo (online), Japan, 25-29 July 2022.
- “Decolonizing English Literature curriculum in India: A Big Data Assessment”, DHARTI2022 (online), 21-25 Feb 2022.
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“Visualizing the Cultural History of South Asia” as part of the panel on “Contextualising and Contesting Digital Humanities in the Global South: Case Studies from India” at the DH2020 Conference organized by the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) 20-24 July 2020. (The abstract was accepted through a peer-review process, though the conference was held in virtual mode.)
- “Caste on Wikipedia: A Case for Open Platforms for a Democratic Internet” at the Annual Conference of Indian Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies at Department of English, Jadavpur University, Kolkata on 5-7 February 2020.
- “A Case for Distributed Archives” at “The Arts, Knowledge and Critique in the Digital Age in India: Addressing Challenges in the Digital Humanities” organized by the Department of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad on 28-29 November 2019.
- “Ideological battles on Wikipedia: A computational study of the linkages between academic and popular histories” at the Digital Humanities Conference organized by the Centre for Digital Humanities at the Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE.DH), Budapest on 25-27 September 2019.
- “Mapping Cultural Production in India: A Computational Approach” at the Annual Conference of Indian Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies at University of Pondicherry, on 6-8 February 2019.
- “A Study of Student Activism in the Digital Era” at the Annual Conference of the Digital Humanities Alliance of India at Indian Institute of Management Indore on 31 May – 2 June 2018.
- “Nation and Biographies: Contestation on Wikipedia” at Dyal Singh College 26 April 2018
- Campus Campaigns: User perceptions in pre-digital and digital eras at Internet Researchs’ Confrerence by Centre for Internet and Society atSambhaavnaa Institute, Kandbari,
Palampur, Himachal Pradesh on 22-24 February, 2018.
- “Back to the Commons: Democracy of Ideas and the Wikipedia” at the International Conference on Language, Literature and Culture held at the Insitute of Advanced Studies in English, Pune on 15-17 December 2017.
- Experience of the Left in Indian Theatre: 1942 to the Present at India@70: Historical and Cultural Perspectives on 70 years of Indian Independence at University of Nottingham Sep 2017
- “Socialisation in the 21st Century: Possibility of Democracy in a Digitised Society” at the conference on ‘Socialism for the Twenty-first Century’ at the University of Havana, 19-21 November 2014.
- “Digital Relations: A Study of Media Wiki” at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi on 11 November 2014.
- “Continuing Counterfactual from Orientalist Narratives to the Wikipedia” at Annual Conference of Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies at Panjab University, Chandigarh in February 2014.
- “2014: Digital Reproduction: A Case of Missed Opportunity” at Interrogating English Studies in India, Bharati College, University of Delhi 5-7 February 2014.
- “Cute Cats and Talking Mice: Theatre, Social Media and Intellectual Property: Thinking of property in theatre and the internet” at ‘Theater and Civil Society: Politics, Public Space, and Performance‘ at the Brown International Advanced Research Institutes at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA between 9-23 June 2012.
- “In a different hue: An adaptation of Chaturanga” at the Australasian Association for Theatre Drama and Performance Studies Conference at Monash University, Clayton Campus, Victoria, Australia between 29 June – 1 July 2011. (This paper was selected as part of the panel for best papers by Early Career Researchers)
- “Theatre, Sharing, Change’ at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla 15 July, 2010.
- “‘Not in My Name’: Who Benefits from Copyright?” at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. 5 November, 2009.
- “Making Space for Change: The Spectator’s view of Proletarian Theatre” the Ninth CLAI (Comparative Literature Association of India) Biennial International Conference held at Hyderabad between 28-31 January 2009.
- ” Political Theater of India- History, contemporary characteristics, and challenges in the Globalised era” at the first International Theater Festival of Kerala, (ITFoK) Asian chapter, 2008, held at Thrissur, Kerala from 22 to31 December 2008, convened by Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Academy with the support of various Kerala government departments and organisations.
- “Comparative Perspectives on Politico-Cultural Performances in Contemporary India” (coauthored with Dr. Dibyesh Anand) at the 20th European Conference for Modern South Asian Studies at University of Manchester between 8-11 July, 2008.
- “Theatre for Development/ Theatre of Resistance: Augusto Boal and Safdar Hashmi in Theory and Practice” at the International Seminar on “Development Paradigms and Cultures of Resistance: A Comparative Perspective on India and Latin America” jointly organized by the Centre for European and Latin American Studies and the Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia at New Delhi between 14-16 February, 2008.
- “The Legacy of Nabanna” at the Annual Conference of the Indian Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (IACLALS) at Udaipur in January 2008.
- “The ‘Liberal’ Babu, the ‘Good’ Peasant and the ‘Bad’ Sahibs: Violence and Political Strategy in Dinabandhu Mitra’s Neeldarpan” at the Annual Conference of the IACLALS held at the Banaras Hindu University in January, 2007.
- “Challenges Before Cultural Resistance: Methods of Intervention” at the International Young Scholar’s Seminar organized by the Academy of Third World Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia and Leftword Books, in April 2006.
- “Part(y)cipation in Culture” at a Conference on ‘Politics of Culture in Contemporary China and India’, organized by the Institute of Chinese Studies, Centre for Studies in Developing Societies (CSDS) in October 2005.
- “Revolutionary Terrorism and Non-Violent Nationalism in Bengal of the Early 20th Century” at the 13th Triennial Conference of the Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (ACLALS) at Hyderabad in August 2004.
- “Valiant Self and Pernicious Foreigner: The Use of History for Nation Making in the Literature of 19th Century Bengal” at the Annual Conference of the Indian Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (IACLALS) held at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in January, 2003.
Invited Talks
“Can poetry be data? Understanding computational approaches to literary studies” on 28 Oct 2024 at the Department of English, Presidency University, Kolkata.
“Computational Humanities: Counting words and more” on 1 October 2024 as part of a Faculty Development Programme organized by Kristu Jayanti College, Bengaluru.
“Implications of electronic analysis for the global south” on 18 September 2023 in Refresher Course of ‘Literatures and Languages: Language, Translation and Culture” organised by Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.
“Anxieties and Excitement of doing DH in India” on 16 Sep 2023 in an online International Faculty Development Programme “Introduction to Digital Humanities” held 19 Aug – 16 Sep organised by Scottish Church College, Kolkata and Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur.
“Understanding social media: The problem of plenty” at the invitation of Grub Street the English Literary Society of Kirorimal College, University of Delhi on 28 March 2023.
“‘English Lit’ to ‘Indian lit’:Corpus analysis with big data” at the Faculty Development Programme (FDP) on the theme ‘Literature Teaching as Cultural Studies’ organised by the Centre for Liberal Arts for Science, Engineering and Technology (CLASET), Anna University Chennai, Shiv Nadar University Chennai and the Department of English at the University of Madras Chennai on 26 March 2023.
“Digital Humanities: An Introduction” at the invitation of Jabberwock, the Academic Journal of the Department of English, Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi on 24 February 2023.
Keynote Address: “Multilingual scholarship in the Digital Age: Challenges and Opportunities for South Asia” at the National Seminar on “Contemporary Aesthetics and Technology”, organized by the Department of English and Centre for Research at Post Graduate Government College for Girls, Sector-11, Chandigarh on 22 February 2023.
“The Many Routes to Europe’s Renaissance” at the invitation of the English Literary Society, Miranda House, University of Delhi on 21 February 2023.
“How to read a 1000 books: An Introduction to Computational Literary Studies” at the invitation of the English Literary Society of Shaheed Bhagat Singh College, University of Delhi on 8 February 2023.
“Multilingual Digital Humanities in South Asia: Challenges and Opportunities” at the “Intersections: International Conference on Digital Humanities” organized by the School of Liberal Studies, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun on 15-16 December, 2022.
“Recovering knowledge commons for the global south” at the seminar on “Science, Technology and Democracy in Contemporary India” organized by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi on 8-9 December, 2022.
“Challenging new hegemonies: Developing digital tools for the South” at the workshop on “Digital Cultures Transforming South Asia” organized by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi on 23 November 2022.
“How far decolonized? A computational assessment of English Literature syllabi in India” at the Refresher Course on “Language, Culture and Literary Representation in India: Emerging Trends and Movements” organized by the Human Resource Development Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi on 15 October 2022.
“Twine Fiction” at the GIAN Course on ‘Digital Literatures and Literatures in the the Digital” organized by the Department of English, Aligarh Muslim University on 7 May 2022.“Scope of Computational Humanities Research” on invitation from the English Literary Society, Kamla Nehru College, University of Delhi on 19 January 2022.
“Lessons from the stage: The IPTA to the Jana Natya Manch” at the Humanities Webinar Series organized by the Department for Humanities and Social Science, IISER Bhopal, 12 November 2021.
Keynote Address: “Recovery of the Knowledge Commons and the Global South” at the International e-Conference on Library and Allied Subjects (e-LAN 2021) organized by Central Library, Banwarilal Bhalotia College , Asansol on 1 November 2021.
“Challenging the Digital Afterlives of Colonialism” at the Online Refresher Course in English from 2nd to 15th September, 2021 organized by The UGC-Human Resource Development Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.
“Digital Humanities: An Introduction” as Enrichment Lecture organized by the Department of English, St. Xavier’s College Jaipur on 27 August 2021.
“Retrieving the ephemeral: Textual minds in performative multiverse” at International Archives Week – Milli Sessions 2021 on 12 June 2021.
“Exploring Open Data sources for the humanities” at the International Webinar on Digital Humanities organized by the Seshadripuram Evening Degree College, Bengaluru, Karnataka on 21 May 2021.
Keynote Speaker at International Online Symposium on “Aesthetics and Digital: Between Reading, Writing and Interpretations” organized by Department of English and Foreign Languages, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore on 9 April 2021.
“Digital Humanities and Literature” on the invitation of the Department of Assamese, Tezpur University on 16 December 2020.
“What is Digital Humanities?” at the online webinar organized by the Vivekananda Institute of Professional Studies, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi on 26 June 2020.
“Taking Humanities Data to Classrooms” at the online webinar organized by the Department of English, Motilal Nehru College, University of Delhi on 17 June 2020.
“Humanities + Data = What is it?” at the online webinar organized by the Department of English, Shyamlal College, University of Delhi on 19 May 2020.
“Silence in the Digital Age” at the UGC-Sponsored National Seminar on “Speaking Silence: History, Politics and Psychology” organised by the Department of English, Lakshmibai College, University of Delhi on 23-24 October 2019.
“The Future and the Archive” at Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur on 17 August 2019.
“Copywrongs and Technology“, Digital Humanities Guest Lecture Series, organised by Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur on 16 August 2019.
‘Performance, Text and Gender’ at Maharaja Agrasen College, New Delhi, 5 Mar 2014.
‘Academic Writing’ as part of Research Methodology Programme at the V.V.Giri National Labour Institute, New Delhi, 10 Jan 2014.
‘Political Theatre Down the Ages’ in History and Art, St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi 9 March 2013.
“Copyright and Censorship” in Silenced Expressions, Kamla Nehru College, University of Delhi, 3rd April 2012.
“Teaching Theatre, Theatre in Teaching” in Literary Genre: Theory and Practice at Dyal Singh College, University of Delhi 27 Jan 2012.
Popular Articles
‘Review: The Delek Archives‘ in Reviews in Digital Humanities. Vol. 3. No. 1: January 2022.
‘Finally a daycare centre at IIT Delhi‘ in thelifeofscience.com 10 Oct 2017.
‘Information cannot be leashed’ in Down to Earth. 4 Jun 2012.
‘Theatre in the Underground in Nepal’s war for democracy‘ in e-Rang No. 30, 15 Sep 2011, published by the India Theatre Forum.
‘Unique Identification Number Project: Cautious Optimism‘ in Pragoti.org. 13 November 2009.
‘Street Theatre in India’ in One India, One People. September 2008.
‘Plays for the people’ was published in Frontline. 28 January, 2005.
Projects
Optical Character and Hand-Written Text Recognition for Indian Languages
Co-PI: Chetan Arora, CSE, IIT Delhi
The project aimed at developing the capacity for rendering of digital text from print and manuscripts in Indian languages through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Hand-Written Text Recognition (HTR). We have created a browser-based took Lipikar that allows the user to upload scanned documents and obtain highly accurate machine readable text.
At present we have reached state of the art capability for Urdu, Kannada, Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Sanskrit, Punjabi, Sindhi, Tamil.
UTRNet: High-Resolution Urdu Text Recognition In Printed Documents Chetan Arora Abdur Rahman, Arjun Ghosh. 17th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR 2023). [Springer Link].
Honours
Awards
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Participated in the institute on ‘Theater and Civil Society: Politics, Public Space, and Performance‘ at the Brown International Advanced Research Institutes at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA between 9-23 June 2012.
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Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla for 2009-10 to work on the project entitled “Freedom from Profit: Eschewing Copyright in Resistance Art”.
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Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Democracy at Westminster University between 19 May – 18 July 2008 sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom. Under the project I engaged in academic exchange with Dr. Dibyesh Anand, Reader in International Relations, Westminster University. The title of the project was: “The Politics of Performance: The Uses of Spectacles for Political Mobilisation in Contemporary India”.