Arpit Gaind

Hello, I’m Arpit.

I’m a Ph.D. candidate and Associate Instructor at UCLA, and I wear a range of hats — a scholar, a hiker and adventure enthusiast, and a media maker working at the intersection of digital humanities, visual anthropology, and media studies.

Professionally, I’m a scholar-practitioner working at the intersection of documentary film, digital humanities, and critical archival studies, centered on Indigenous media sovereignty. Over the past decade I’ve built long-term collaborations with rural and Indigenous communities across Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh — including as a team member at Akhra, Ranchi, a grassroots media collective — using participatory filmmaking to challenge dominant narratives about Adivasi life. My work has been recognized with an Emerging Scholar Award and presented at venues including the Royal Anthropological Institute, the Image Conference, and CISA at UCLA, which I’ve also helped organize. You can find my published work on Google Scholar.

Outside the classroom and the archive, I’m just as likely to be found on a trail, behind the wheel on a long drive, or several hundred feet underground — caving is a strange, wonderful hobby I’ve picked up along the way. I’m also a fairly obsessive photographer and a bit of a tech tinkerer, which probably explains why half my fieldwork ends up documented on camera and the other half turns into some new gadget-fueled workflow.

This site is organized around that same range: Research and Teaching cover my academic work, Writing and Speaking collect my publications and talks, Making holds my documentary and media projects, and Awards and Recognitions rounds up the honors along the way. Feel free to poke around, or just say hello.

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Culture and Performance at UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, School of Arts and Architecture, with more than a decade of research, teaching, and filmmaking experience examining Indigenous media sovereignty and digital archives among Adivasi communities in Jharkhand, India.

As an educator, I serve as UCLA’s Teaching Assistant Consultant (2025–2026), mentoring graduate instructors in pedagogical design, and hold graduate certificates in Digital Humanities and Writing Pedagogy. My teaching spans media production, critical theory, and writing-based seminars. My institutional leadership includes chairing the ASUCLA Communications Board and guest-editing volume 57 of Comitatus.

Teaching Courses & philosophy

Research Dissertation & interests

Making Films & archive

Contact Email & profiles

Google Scholar ORCID UCLA WAC/D Vimeo Instagram

Contact

ar.arpitg@gmail.com

Get in Touch

Affiliations

Association for Asian Studies · American Anthropological Association · Center for India and South Asia (CISA), UCLA · European Council for South Asian Studies · European Association of Social Anthropologists · Society for Cinema and Media Studies

Curriculum Vitae

Download full Research CV (PDF) →