Professor Pratap Rughani

Biography

London College of Communication's (LCC) research in Screen, Media and Design including the relationship of Teaching and Knowledge Exchange to Research is central to Pratap’s work at LCC where he is Professor of Documentary Practices, after leading the Research Department for staff and students for seven years. He develops UK and international research partnerships (especially acroos Europe and India) that develop LCC’s unique research emphasis and its focus on the role of the imagination in social justice and inclusion.

Pratap has extensive experience as Course Director of MAs, including writing and leading MA Documentary Film. He is an award-winning documentary film maker with over 35 credits on films for Channel 4, BBC TV, the British Council and fine art spaces including Modern Art Oxford and the Stamps GAllery of Art.

He presents and writes widely on documentary practice and ethics; developing dialogue in contested spaces; emergence from conflict and toxic polarisation, exploring documentary as a key to inter-cultural, decolonial and post-colonial futures. He has published widely including on Stanley Kubrick; the ethics of listening and mediation in communication. He is a member of UAL's research centre in Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN) and the Decolonising Arts Institute,

KEYWORDS: documentary practices (especially in film & photography); mediation and dialogue in documentary narrative; ethics of practice; freedom of expression; intersectional subjectivity; post colonial & decolonial perspectives; nationality; intercultural communication; peace studies & art for mediation; Kubrick; South Asian art; photography. He writes on documentary ethics & the philosophy and vision of inter-cultural documentary.

For his individual excellence Pratap Rughani was awarded a prestigious National Teaching Fellowship (NTF) in 2013, by the Higher Education Academy, the professional organisation for higher education teachers. He served as Deputy Chair of the NTF's committee 2015-18 and is a Prncipal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, In 2019 he was elected Chair of the Editorial board of Media Practice & Education, MPE, a leading academic journal for practice-based research where he served for four years. He joined the AHRC’s Peer Review College in 2020 and served on the UK's Research Excellence Framework 2021 (REF) Panel 34, with responsibility for assessing outputs, impact and environment. In 2021 he was appointed a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He is a Trustee of the environmental charity Pragya and served as a trustee of the anti-discrimination charity the Karuna Trust 2015-22. In 2021 he joined the Representative Board of ELIA (European Arts School League) where we was elected in 2023 and has served on the ELIA Executive since then.