About

Arpit Gaind is a Ph.D. candidate (ABD) in Culture and Performance in UCLA's Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, part of the School of Arts and Architecture, where he holds graduate certificates in Digital Humanities and Writing Pedagogy. His doctoral research investigates how Adivasi (Indigenous) media collectives in Jharkhand, India, create visual counter-archives that challenge colonial regimes of representation through participatory filmmaking practices.

With a decade of experience spanning teaching, fieldwork, and ethnographic production, Gaind bridges theoretical scholarship with practice-based research. He was recognized as an Emerging Scholar at The Image Conference in Hong Kong (2018) and the Arts in Society Conference in Spain (2022), and his work interrogates post-colonial representation and decolonial methodologies. His publications include a peer-reviewed article on the politics of filmmaking and contingency, forthcoming book chapters on Adivasi media production with Palgrave Macmillan and Routledge, and writing on tribal representation in film. Gaind's filmmaking portfolio includes Ayangraji (2021), Envisioning Development Practice (2019), and Chinhari: The Young India (2019), centering rural and Indigenous narratives. His Ways of Seeing project (2021–present) established a digital archive of Indigenous media, exemplifying his commitment to community-driven knowledge production.

As an instructor at UCLA, Gaind teaches Critical Media Literacy, Video Skills and Techniques, and courses in ethnographic methods, and serves as UCLA's Teaching Assistant Consultant (2025–2026), training graduate instructors university-wide in inclusive grading and curriculum design. Gaind has organized academic conferences, including UCLA's CISA Interdisciplinary Conference on South Asia and "Conversations with Ramachandra Guha" (2017–18) at Ashoka University. He also served as the Chair and Vice Chair of the ASUCLA Communications Board at UCLA student media (2024-2026), guest-edited volume 57 of Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and is a member of the American Anthropological Association and the Association for Asian Studies. Currently, Gaind is completely is PhD dissertation while also serving as a Cluster Program TAC at UEI (Undergraduate Education Initiatives), UCLA, and as a Technology consultant for the Humanities Technology Center, UCLA

For more information, please visit:

1. Arpit's website: arpitgaind.com
2. Arpit's LinkedIn Profile: www.linkedin.com/in/arpit-gaind-6a46b01b5
3. Arpit's Google Scholar profile: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=3nvxHzgAAAAJ