Ramesh Srinivasan (born 1976) is an American academic who is a professor of Information Studies and Design/Media Arts[1] at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Srinivasan earned his PhD in design studies at Harvard University, MSc degree in media arts and science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and B.Sc degree in Engineering at Stanford University.[2] He served as a teaching fellow at the Graduate School of Design and Department of Visual and Environmental Design at Harvard University from 2004-2005.[3]
Srinivasan has been a faculty member in the Information Studies and Design/Media Arts departments at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) since 2005. He has appeared on The Young Turks and is founder/host of the Utopias Podcast.[4] .
He is also the founder[5] of the UC-wide Digital Cultures Lab. This lab examines the means by which new media technologies impact businesses, economics, cultures, politics, labor, and the environment through collaborations with global partners. He is on the board of directors for Digital Democracy,[6] which works with land protectors in the Amazon.
Srinivasan previously served as a national surrogate for Senator Bernie Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign and as an Innovation policy committee member for President Biden.[7]
Srinivasan's books include Whose Global Village? Rethinking How Technology Impacts Our World, After the Internet with Adam Fish, and Beyond the Valley, which listed in 2019 by Forbes as a top ten book in Tech.[8]
He has given TEDx Talks, and made appearances on MSNBC, and Public Radio International.
Srinivasan has worked with bloggers who overthrew the recent authoritarian Kyrgyz regime,[9] [10] [11] non-literate tribal populations in India to study how literacy emerges through uses of technology,[12] and traditional Native American communities to study how non-Western understandings of the world can introduce new ways of looking at cultural heritage and the future of the internet and networked technologies.[13] [14] [15] His work has impacted contemporary understandings of media studies, anthropology and sociology, design, and economic and political development studies.[16]
Srinivasan is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the American Anthropological Association, and a member of the editorial boards of Science, Technology, & Human Values, International Journal of E-Politics, and Information Technologies and International Development.[17]