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Biography
Sandeep Ray is a visual artist, writer and historian. He is head of the School of Humanities. Prior to joining Nottingham Malaysia, Sandeep taught at the University of Wisconsin, Rice University, and the Singapore University of Technology and Design. His research emphasizes connections between media and history. Sandeep has related interests in non-fiction film; the novel; old media; global refugee crises; and transnational approaches to Asian Studies. His 2021 monograph Celluloid Colony (NUS Press) about ethnography in Dutch propagandistic film in colonial Indonesia was a finalist for the EuroSEAS 2022 Social Science Book Prize. His debut novel A Flutter in the Colony (Penguin Random House-SEA) is set in 1940s Bengal and 1950s Malaya and explores suppressed historical pasts through the experiences of an uprooted family. Sandeep has been a reviewer for several academic journals including the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, American Historical Review, Historical Journal of Radio, Film and Television and History of Photography. In 2024, Sandeep received the David H. Culbert Routledge-IAMHIST Prize for Best Article by an Established Scholar. He was elected to the Council of the International Association for Media and History (IAMHIST) for a 4-year term in 2025.
Sandeep's films (IMDB link) have been reviewed in The American Anthropologist and the Journal for Visual Anthropology and have been screened at several film festivals including at Busan (BIFF), Taiwan (TIDF), Sydney, Paris (Jean Rouch), Tehran (IIFF), Copenhagen (DOX), and have curated at the Flaherty Seminar, the Margaret Mead Festival, the Films Division of India and the Whitney and Getty Museums. His films are distributed internationally by Documentary Educational Resources in Massachusetts. He recently had a solo photo exhibit at Hikayat Gallery, Penang titled Afternoon Histories. Sandeep has guest-lectured widely and been invited to serve on several festival juries.
Personal website: www.sandeepray.com
Teaching Summary
For the 25-26 AY I am teaching:
Documentary Film (Theory and Practice) HUMS 3014
Literature And Rebellion: Stories From Late-Colonial Southeast Asia HUMS 1007
Beginning Creative Writing HUMS 4026
Research Summary
Sandeep will be a Visiting Research Scholar at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University from June to September 2025 to work on a new book project tentatively titled Scenes From a Slow… read more
Recent Publications
Current Research
Sandeep will be a Visiting Research Scholar at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University from June to September 2025 to work on a new book project tentatively titled Scenes From a Slow Departure: Postwar visuals of Japanese Surrendered Personnel in Southeast Asia. He is analyzing film footage from archival various sources, including the National Archives of Singapore, the Imperial War Museum, NHK, and the Dutch repositories Eye Filmmuseum and Beeld en Geluid. The study also investigates associated secondary sources such as "dope sheets" (camera logs) and newspaper articles. Some of this material has already been located and archived, including declassified SEAC (South East Asia Command) reports. Contextualizing historically significant, at times gruesome footage, the study hopes to provide a multifaceted understanding of the aftermath of the Japanese occupation, extending scholarly discourse beyond textual and testimonial sources.
Collaborating with his students with support from the Singapore University of Technology and Design in 2021, Sandeep created an open database of primary sources for the study of the Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia.