Arjunraj

Arjunraj, M.A., serves as a Research Associate at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology within the Department of Cultural History and Cultural Studies, Faculty of Humanities, University of Hamburg since January 2025. An anthropologist-filmmaker hybrid, he pioneers methodologies where academic inquiry and cinematic practice converge through multimodal storytelling and decolonial frameworks.

His research traverses Multimodal & AudioVisual Anthropology, Collaborative Storytelling, and Decolonial Filmmaking with focused explorations in Gender/Queer studies and Multispecies Relations. Arjunraj investigates liminality through embodied cinema—exemplified by his Körperkino project reimagining storytelling futures—and intergenerational narratives in the feature documentary Liminality, creating dialogic spaces between scholarly analysis and sensory ethnography.

Recent outputs reveal consistent thematic threads: decolonial reclamation of knowledge systems (e.g., Indian Ocean ancestral studies), queer embodiment across media formats, and multispecies entanglements documented through collaborative filmmaking. This trajectory demonstrates growing methodological innovation where film becomes both research instrument and anthropological output.

Key recognitions include:

• CIRCE Fellowship for Artistic Research (2023, 2024)
• QueerScope Grant for Chimera documentary (2023)
• Robert Bosch Stiftung Crossing Borders Fellowship (2019)
• EU delegate at OUTBURST Queer Arts Festival Belfast (2022)

Arjunraj maintains active research funding through Berlin Senate Fellowships (2024) and consecutive CIRCE Research Fellowships (2023-2024), supporting international collaborations with U Institut Berlin and queer film networks. While student supervision details remain unspecified in public records, his University of Hamburg affiliation suggests graduate mentorship opportunities aligned with audiovisual anthropology programs. Current projects like Körperkino establish frameworks for embodied cinematic research, positioning his work at anthropology's evolving methodological frontier where filmic expression drives theoretical innovation.