Faculty

Dr. Shoma Munshi is research scholar, and former professor of anthropology at the American University of Kuwait (2006-2019). She is a scholar of socio-cultural Anthropology. Dr. Munshi earned her PhD in 1990 from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, France.  
  
Dr. Munshi’s research focuses on the anthropology of media. She has carried out extensive ethnographic fieldwork on various forms of media – especially television and film – as a means of understanding producers, audiences, and how various forms of media shape social and cultural identities; and is in turn, shaped by them; how it drives social change and impacts our daily lives. Her recent research is focused on digital anthropology – first, on the explosion of streaming OTT (over-the-top) platforms, particularly in a comparative framework between India and the Middle East; and second, on ethnographic research on the use and consequences of social media and smart phones as part of the everyday lives of people in India and Kuwait.  
  
Dr. Munshi is the author of two editions of Prime Time Soap Operas on Indian Television (Routledge, 2020 & 2010), and Remote Control: Indian Television in the New Millennium (Penguin Books, 2012). She is also the editor of Images of the ‘Modern Woman’ in Asia: Global Media, Local Meanings (Curzon Press, 2001) and co-editor of Media, War and Terrorism: Responses from the Middle East and Asia, (Routledge, 2004, 2007), in addition to authoring several articles in refereed journals.  
  
With extensive academic and administrative experience in different multicultural settings, Dr. Munshi has served as senior research partner at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Ethnic and Religious Diversity, Göttingen, Germany; assistant director of the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI) at the University of Pennsylvania; associate professor (affiliated) at the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research (ASSR) and Center for Religion & Society, University of Amsterdam; and associate professor at Delhi University. She has also been a visiting scholar at Dartmouth College, Rockefeller Center for Public Policy, Department of Anthropology, and the Middle East Studies Program, New Hampshire; the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, France; Deakin University, Australia; and Research School CNWS, Leiden University; and worked as a consultant with the United Nations (UNDP) in New Delhi, India. Dr. Munshi is a peer reviewer for leading academic book publishers and peer-reviewed journals, as well as reviewer for the Qatar National Research Foundation (QNRF).