About Shobha Avadhani

Educator, Writer, Mentor

I’m a Senior Lecturer in Digital Media Culture at the Department of Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore. I teach a suite of courses around the exploration and critical interrogation of media cultures. In addition, I also teach qualitative research methods and public speaking. In all my classes, I teach from a feminist sensibility, whether the class explicitly centers gender or not. This means that my instructional design and interactions with students are built around challenging traditional assumptions, building relationships and community, and privileging student voice.

I tell my students that all you need to call yourself a writer is to write. But this sounds easier than it really is. I prioritise writing as a mode of inquiry, expression, and community for my students as well as myself. This doesn’t mean that I don’t care about how my writing is received by the target readership. What it does mean is that my primary goal is not to fit into an existing box, but to find ways to write in new shapes and spaces, using embodied experience as a key point of reference, thinking alongside the work of others. I’ve done the box thing. I’m over it.

I’ve been a teacher for many years, and I think I’ve earned the right to call myself a mentor. My students and colleagues come to me for advice about writing, teaching, further studies, careers and many other things. I’ve also mothered two sons to adulthood – they seem to be doing okay!

I’m still building this site – it started as a compulsory activity for a course I enrolled in a few years ago (hence the somewhat stilted posts!) but I’m reclaiming it as my own space to share my work. Watch out for my course syllabi, blog posts about pedagogy/technology intersections, links to talks and articles, and anything else that crops up.

If you’d like to contact me, I can be reached at dr.shobha.avadhani@gmail.com.