Kachan K. Malik (PhD) is a university professor at the University of Hyderabad and is a Faculty Fellow with the ‘UNESCO Chair on Community Media’, there, where she unfolds her work in support of community media in India and in South Asia. Kanchan presents herself as a researcher, learning from the powerful people building community media where her journeys take her.

Kanchan has been with the Department of Communication, UoH, since 2007, where she also served as Head from 2017-20. She has been a Faculty Fellow with the ‘UNESCO Chair on Community Media’ since 2011, an Editor of the e-newsletter – ‘CR News’ and the Vice-Chair for the Ethics Working Group of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR).

With a dual Master’s in Economics and Mass Communication, Kanchan worked as a journalist with ‘The Economic Times’, New Delhi, before settling for a career in academics.

For over two and a half decades, Kanchan K. Malik’s academic interests and endeavours have been in Community and Alternative Media; Women and Community Media; Journalism Studies; and Media Ethics. She has worked with national and international research projects and published scholarly papers and chapters on media interventions by non-governmental organisations for empowerment at the grassroots level. Her research has also contributed to policy advocacy efforts for community radio in India.

Prof. Malik has co-authored with Prof. Vinod Pavarala the much-cited book ‘Other Voices: The Struggle for Community Radio in India’ (Sage: 2007) to which she refers in our conversation. Their other co-edited book is titled ‘Community Radio in South Asia: Reclaiming the Airwaves’ (Routledge: 2020). She recently worked on the manual ‘Strengthening Gender Sensitive Practices and Programming in Community Radio’ (UNESCO, 2021).