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Nayana Prakash

DPhil Student

Nayana Prakash

DPhil Student

About

Nayana is a DPhil researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute. Her research focuses on purpose-built storytelling platforms in India and the changing nature of writing online. Specifically, she looks at how Indian women use storytelling platforms and explores questions of voice, agency and culture in her work. In her work, she blends ethnographic methodology with literary practice, drawing from her background as a scholar of English Literature.

Outside of her DPhil project, Nayana has been involved in several projects which broadly cover concern the impact of the Internet and technology on society.  She is most interested in work which advocates for marginalised voices online and in society. She has published for leading Spanish newspaper El País (in English) on issues around platforms responsibilities and impacts.  She also runs a biweekly Spotify award-winning podcast, ‘Skeptechs‘, with co-host and fellow DPhil Josh Cowls, which covers a range of global tech news and misuses of technology worldwide. She was awarded a Minderoo-AI Challenge Grant to work with a theatre company on the London-based production, ‘Move Fast and Break Things’, which focused on the relationship between ‘Big Tech’, big data and harmful labour practices. She has co-authored on a wide range of topics, from children and misinformation for UNICEF, to AI in the workplace, to a digital privacy guide for migrant domestic workers in the UK.

She also teaches at the University of Oxford for the Stanford Programme and the Sarah Lawrence Programme. Nayana has built syllabuses for and convened courses on the areas of ‘Social Dynamics of the Internet’ and ‘Gender and Technology’.

Research Interests

Postcolonial theory; gender online; digital colonialism; Internet geographies; narrative; race; storytelling; invisible labour.

Positions at the OII

  • DPhil Student, October 2019 -

Research

News & Press

Related Topics