Research Leadership
My Research leadership position also includes working closely with a large variety of funders. I have extensive experience in connecting with academic and non-academic funders to produce global impact, large-scale research projects that are supported by a multi-stakeholder array of investors. My work has often been to find complementary infrastructure and resources to match available academic resources, and to create the opportunities for inter-disciplinary and cross-sectoral research to emerge.
Since 2009, I have successfully build collaborative research projects around questions of Internet and Society, through multi-stakeholder engagements, and managed and operationalised research funds averaging at 1.2 Million Euros annually. Additionally, Since 2016, as the Member of the Executive Board, at ArtEZ University of the Arts, I have been jointly deciding on research infrastructure and investment, including managing and expanding 2nd and 3rd stream research incomes, leading to a significant growth of 34% in the research income of the Arts University over 4 years.
Research Publications
My research practice has been anchored in a commitment to collaborative work, open access dissemination of knowledge, critical frameworks for multi-disciplinary approaches to the key questions, and establishing new methods and areas for research inquiries to be platformed, especially for centring voices and knowledge from non-canonical geographies and people. Consideration of accessibility and translation of research practices into public discourse and conversations has also been central to my research writing practices. My 10 year-long column in The Indian Express, titled Digital Natives, is an example of engaging with research writing for multiple audiences.
Teaching Philosophy
Teaching has been an integral part of my research practice. My ongoing work involves engaging with students at Bachelors, Masters, and Doctoral levels. Firmly rooted in the idea of ‘safe spaces’ that are strategically unsafe but existentially safe, and inspired by the ‘guide on the side’ models, my classrooms are experimental, immersive, engaged, and collaborative in nature.
Informed by practices and theories of feminist pedagogy and critical making, I am particularly sensitive to the different personal and social structures within which students are placed, and make questions of identity, belonging, and care, the central tenets of teaching.
Career Arc
Dr. Nishant Shah is the Director of Research and Outreach and Professor of Aesthetics and Cultures of Technology at the ArtEZ University of the Arts, The Netherlands. After serving as the Vice President of Research for 4 years, he takes up the new roles where he is responsible for building a research corpus that looks at the role that art and design education and practice can play towards building resilient futures, equitable societies, and critical diversity. His professorship seeks to unpack the current and emerging state of digital technologies through a techno-cultural and techno-aesthetic (AestheTechs) framework to support social change actors. He also regularly teaches at universities, trains professionals, engages in critical research projects and participates as keynote and plenary speaker at conferences around the world.
He was the Co-founder and former Director – Research (2009- 2014) of the non-profit, autonomous research and policy think tank Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India, that works on questions of openness, access to knowledge, digital activism, and inclusion through South-South collaborations. Along with building the research vision and implementing it through various programmatic and projects, he was also responsible for administration, monitoring, evaluation, reporting, and public engagement of the work towards multiple stakeholders in academia, civil society, and governmental organisations.
As a Knowledge Partner, with the Dutch Development Aid Agency, Hivos, (2009-2016) Nishant has initiated and built the Knowledge Programme on ‘Civic Explorations’ that looks at mobilising communities in emerging society towards civic action, intervention, and learning. Through three global projects – Digital AlterNatives with a Cause?, Making Change through Digital Activism, and Critical Digital Humanities and Learning, he has initiated research with change makers, young practitioners of digital technologies, and global south civil organisations towards producing new networks of intervention and education in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South and East Asia. He now serves as a mentor on the Digital Earth Fellowship thinking through questions of digital futures.
He is honored to be Faculty Associate 2020-2021 at the Berkman Klein Centre for Internet & Society, Harvard University and proud to be associated with the Association of Progressive Communication as a mentor on the Feminist Internet Research Network that ambitiously seeks to imagine an Internet informed and shaped by the Feminist Principles of the Internet. He is particularly focused on questions of comparative access and hate speech online.
In his commitment towards Open Knowledge and Critical feminist pedagogies, Nishant has worked closely as advisor and steering committee member with the following groups: The Digital Media and Learning Initiative, at the University of California, Irvine, USA; ‘The Network of Centres for Internet & Society’ housed variously at the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society, Harvard University, Cambridge USA, and the Humboldt Institute for Internet Governance, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany; The ‘Inter Asia Cultural Studies Consortium’ housed at the Song Kong Hae University, Seoul, South Korea; A global distributed online learning initiative for feminist technology studies called FemTechNet; and an affiliate with the Centre for Internet and Human Rights and Tactical Technologies Collective in Berlin, Germany. He also serves as a jury member and advisor to Art Residency collectives like Khoj, New Delhi, India, The Schloss Solitude Akademie, Stuttgart, Germany, and Het Nieuwe Instittuut, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
He consults in his individual capacities with private Internet corporations like Google, Facebook, Yahoo and advices Internet Governance debates representing the issues and questions of the Global South towards building inclusive, participatory, and open societies.