Lakshmi Padmanabhan

Lakshmi Padmanabhan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Radio/Television/Film at Northwestern University’s School of Communication. She teaches in the Screen Cultures doctoral program and is affiliated with the MFA in Documentary Media, as well as the departments of Performance Studies and Asian Languages and Cultures.

• Research Focus: Histories of political cinema, nonfiction/experimental film, minoritarian visual cultures, and intersections with anticolonial thought, Marxist aesthetics, and Lacanian psychoanalysis.
• Awards:
  • Faculty Fellowship, Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities
  • UNDO Colab Fellowship
• Education: PhD in Modern Culture and Media from Brown University; postdoctoral fellowship at Dartmouth College.
• Publications: Contributed to journals like Cultural Critique, Camera Obscura, and Art History, with forthcoming work in edited volumes.
• Curation: Programs film and video art at venues including Doc Lisboa, e-flux Screening Room, and BRIC Arts; served on the Chicago International Film Festival jury.