Dr Pradip Sarkar

Biography

Dr Pradip Sarkar is a Melbourne-based academic, DJ and producer working across Information Systems and Media Studies. He is a lecturer at RMIT University and researches how people use digital technologies, most recently how independent musicians in India use them in their practice. As Docta Deep he founded the Melbourne live act Sikander in 2008, and he presents Tiger Beats Elephant Grooves on PBS 106.7FM.

His research uses science and technology studies (STS) and ethnographic methods to look at how people adopt and live with digital technologies.

He was born in Calcutta and grew up between India and West Africa before settling in Melbourne, his long-time home. That mix of cultures runs through both his research and his music.

Academic career

Sarkar built his early academic career in Information Systems at RMIT. Since 2008 he has published at the field's main international conferences, including ICIS, AMCIS, PACIS and the Bled eConference. His work from this period falls into three themes:

Online communities: a long collaboration with John Lenarcic on blogs as "third places", on niche online communities and their decline, and later on MOOCs.

Culture and technology adoption: how cultural diversity shapes e-government, including studies of e-Hajj and of eGovernment capacity in Saudi Arabia.

IT management and e-business: managerial attitudes to Green IT, consumer redress in online retail, and how staff perceive university administrative systems.

He co-wrote several of these papers with doctoral students he was supervising.

Current research

Sarkar has undertaken a second PhD in RMIT's School of Media and Communication. It examines how independent musicians in India use digital technologies in their practice, focusing on the country's emerging hip hop and grassroots scenes. The project draws on both his Information Systems background and his long involvement in music.

His wider interests include the politics of independent music in South Asia, from underground hip hop that voices lower-caste experience to Calcutta's punk and Sufi-influenced scenes. He is a member of CASTAC, the Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology and Computing.

Music and radio

Under the name Docta Deep, Sarkar founded Sikander in 2008 as an outlet for his Indian-influenced beat productions with percussionist CJ Prem accompaning him on Roland Handsonic. It grew into a live act with Jeremy Malcomson on electric sitar and guitar and Neil Cook (Nifty) on saxophone and synthesiser. The band calls its sound "post-world music": dub, trip-hop, bass culture, psychedelic funk and South Asian ragas reworked for the dancefloor.

Sikander has played festivals, clubs and community events in Australia and overseas. Highlights include support slots for the Dhol Foundation at Arts Centre Melbourne and for Unified Gekko at the Famous Spiegeltent. Sarkar also DJs global bass and dub-leaning sets around Melbourne.

On community radio he presents Tiger Beats Elephant Grooves on PBS 106.7FM, a two-hour Saturday program of South Asian music beyond Bollywood and classical. He has also hosted shows on Kiss FM.

Outside work, he advocates for animal welfare and environmental causes in India.