Contact
Biography
Sandeep Ray is a visual artist, writer and historian. He is head of the School of Humanities. Prior to joining Nottingham Malaysia, Sandeep taught at the University of Wisconsin, Rice University, and the Singapore University of Technology and Design. His research emphasizes connections between media and history. Sandeep has related interests in non-fiction film; the novel; old media; global refugee crises; and transnational approaches to Asian Studies. His 2021 monograph Celluloid Colony (NUS Press) about ethnography in Dutch propagandistic film in colonial Indonesia was a finalist for the EuroSEAS 2022 Social Science Book Prize. His debut novel A Flutter in the Colony (Penguin Random House-SEA) is set in 1940s Bengal and 1950s Malaya and explores suppressed historical pasts through the experiences of an uprooted family. Sandeep has been a reviewer for several academic journals including the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, American Historical Review, Historical Journal of Radio, Film and Television and History of Photography. In 2024, Sandeep received the David H. Culbert Routledge-IAMHIST Prize for Best Article by an Established Scholar.
Sandeep's films (IMDB link) have been reviewed in The American Anthropologist and the Journal for Visual Anthropology and have been screened at several film festivals including at Busan (BIFF), Taiwan (TIDF), Sydney, Paris (Jean Rouch), Tehran (IIFF), Copenhagen (DOX), and have curated at the Flaherty Seminar, the Margaret Mead Festival, the Films Division of India and the Whitney and Getty Museums. His films are distributed internationally by Documentary Educational Resources in Massachusetts. He recently had a solo photo exhibit at Hikayat Gallery, Penang titled Afternoon Histories. Sandeep has guest-lectured widely and been invited to serve on several festival juries.
Personal website: www.sandeepray.com
Teaching Summary
For the 24-25 AY I am teaching:
Documentary Film (Theory and Practice)
Film and Television in Social and Cultural Context
Introduction to Creative Writing
Research Summary
Sandeep is currently co-editing a special volume titled, 'Encountering Violence: Media and Memory in Asia' with Han Sang Kim of Ajou University. The project originated as a collective endeavor with… read more
Recent Publications
Current Research
Sandeep is currently co-editing a special volume titled, 'Encountering Violence: Media and Memory in Asia' with Han Sang Kim of Ajou University. The project originated as a collective endeavor with several scholars from the region in response to the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar's Rakhine State. The editors believe that the ongoing Rohingya crisis continues to share the entangled structures stemming from Asia's violent trajectories, and its media representation can be interpreted with careful reference to past cases from Asia. This special issue will explore the ways in which the violent experiences in Asia's past and present including colonial rule, imperial expansion and mobilization, wartime massacres and exploitation, cold war conflicts and divisions, and state violence and oppression are remembered, represented, and reproduced in the media.
Collaborating with his students with support from the Singapore University of Technology and design, Sandeep recently created an open database of primary sources for the study of the Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia.
Future Research
Sandeep is researching film material in the NAS, IWM and other archives for a book about the year after the Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia.