Ms. Rinku Pegu PhD is Associate Professor, India Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi, India. Dr Rinku Pegu is a Historian by discipline and Media Practitioner by profession. In terms of academic interest has looked closely at the issue of migration, identity formation and emergence of public sphere in Assam during the colonial period from 1885 -1950. Areas of specialization include Media studies, Gender Studies and Visual Communication.

 

Educational Background

 

PhD : Modern Indian History, Jawaharlal Nehru University , New Delhi

Doctoral thesis Being and Belonging : Negotiating Identity in Colonial Assam C. 1900-1950.

M.Phil: Modern Indian History, Jawaharlal Nehru University , New Delhi

Dissertation “The Line System: Boundaries, Identities and the shaping of a Public Sphere in Colonial Assam.

Master of Arts : Modern Indian History, Jawaharlal Nehru University , New Delhi

 

Work Experience

 

Has been teaching, training and researching since 2006 at IIMC . Areas of specialisation includes Media studies, Gender Studies and Visual Communication . With prior experience as a journalist in the national news media covering issues of employment, gender empowerment, social issues of accessibility to health and education, mobilisations amongst others. During this stint Ms Pegu availed the opportunity to travel throughout India covering crisis like starvation deaths in Odisha, Bhuj Earthquake in Gujarat and drought in Rajasthan. Given the interest in development concerns and ideas travelled to districts of Udaipur and Rajsamand to cover the first five years of the historic implementation of 33% reservation for women at the micro Panchayat level.

 

Academic Awards

 

• Recipient of Fellowship from the Centre for Studies in Developing Societies (CSDS), New Delhi to conduct a study on ‘Negotiating Citizenship’.

• Recipient of Fellowship from the National Foundation of India (NFI), New Delhi to document the lives and experiences of people in Assam during floods.

• Recipient of Doctorate Fellowship from Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), New Delhi.

 

List of publications

 

Recasting Feminine Identity in Assamese Cinema : Joymoti as a contributing chapter in the edited book Social and Cultural Dynamics in Indian Cinema, IGI Global, US, 2020 ISBN13 9781799835110

‘Nirnay’: Arguing the case for public screening of documentaries in rural India in the journal, Communicator, 2017, ISSN 0588-8093.

The Line System and the Birth of a Public sphere in Assam, Indian History Congress, Proceedings 2004, ISSN 2249-1937.

Contributing author to an anthology titled “September 11, 2001: Feminist Perspectives”, Spinifex Press, Australia. ISBN 1-55192-657-1.

 

Research Papers Presented

 

International Conference

Community Media in Assam: Revisiting Boundaries and Borders in an International Conference on Encountering the Social: Masquerades, Fluidities & Becomings of Postcapitalism, Deluze and Guattari World Congress , 2020 .

Gender & Digital Access as Myth or Reality: Trajectory Of SEWA Delhi And WFS India in international seminar on Media Technologies and Accessibility: Politics, Representations and Paradigms, Pondicherry University, 2020.

 

Country Presentation on Status of Women in India vis-a-vis Crime, in international conference organised by SAARC Information Centre, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2011.

 

Digboi : Multiple Narratives of an Oil Town, paper presented in international conference on Writing the Northeast: New Perspectives , Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, 2009.

 

National Conference

 

How Social is Labour? Paper Presented in National Seminar on Media Technology and Power of Politics: The Indian Conventicle, 2016.

 

M.Phil Dissertation titled The Line System: Boundaries, Identities and the shaping of a of Public Sphere in Colonial Assam from Jawaharlal Nehru University focused on how the British regime facilitated the migration of farmers from neighboring Bengal to introduce the cultivation of Jute on a commercial scale in Assam and consequently how this policy debate shaped the dynamics of public sphere.

 

The Ph.D Thesis titled Being and Belonging : Negotiating Identity in Colonial Assam C. 1900-1950 sought to uncover the premise on which the idea of citizenship was circulated and engaged with by the people inhabiting Assam in the first half of the 20th Century. It looked at the constituencies of Intellegentsia, various local communities and migrant communities engaging with this concept and constructing a broader inclusive identity around it. In terms of technology it focuses on the role of print technology and the consequent public sphere that discourses around it helped generate and shape. Additionally, it dwells on the critical role essayed by the colonial government in impacting the narrative on the idea of a nascent citizenship and identity.

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