Sreela Sarkar is a 2007-2008 Doctoral Fellow with the National Center for Digital Government and a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Sreela holds a bachelors degree in English Literature from St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, a graduate diploma in Social Communications and Media from Sophia Polytechnic in Mumbai and a masters degree in Communication from the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Sreela’s primary research interests are in understanding Information and Communication Technologies in the context of social change and development especially in countries of the global south. She is specifically interested in how ICT policy and intervention are related to processes of governance and activism. She is working on developing her dissertation project that explores Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives and networks of transnational and local firms, the state and civil society in the field of ICT, development and governance in India. Sreela’s academic training involves integrating studies of institutions and policies with questions of culture and identity. Her methods are based on ethnographic field work and case studies.

Prior to joining graduate school, Sreela worked with directing and producing award winning documentary films and has an interventionist interest in communication technologies. Her masters thesis studied an inner city, community video group in Chicago that negotiated art and activism in their work. In addition to the NCDG fellowship, Sreela’s pre-dissertation research has been supported by a research assistantship for a Social Science Research Council Grant on International Collaborative Research and research and travel grants from the Graduate School and the Department of Communication at UMass.