Murali’s academic research is concerned with the disavowal of protected categories, such as caste, race, gender and sexual orientation in media and communication studies and digital cultures. His research at Fairwork builds on this academic training and activism to scrutinise and mitigate re-manifestations of digital inequalities in the platform economies.
As a Faculty Fellow – Race and Technology at Data & Society, his work focused on reimagining communication and technology studies from (anti)caste perspectives. He has recently published a module on Critical and Caste and Technology Studies. As part of his Fellowship at Data and Society, Murali will publish an edited anthology of exploitative practices of minoritised platform workers in Bangladesh, India and Brazil. Murali has written research and policy briefs that include but are not limited to pro poor access to communication, internet governance, access to knowledge, caste and development and most recently caste-hate speech and digital media politics. Murali has been an active member of anti-caste stakeholder’s forum in the UK that seeks to criminalise caste-practices in the UK.
A list of Murali’s select publications can be found here.
Digital ethnography, Internet inequalities, Manifestations of Caste and Race on the Internet, Caste, India, South Asia, Globalisation of caste
Internet and social inequalities; labour and social hierarchies (caste); Caste and technology; Gig economy in non-western societies; Caste, race, gender and internet technologies; and Machine learning biases social hierarchies
With Dr Murali Shanmugavelan
An introduction to Critical Caste and Technology Studies with Dr Murali Shanmugavelan
