Ms. Aparna Subramanian is passionate about preserving the past through archiving. She has been an archivist and a program officer and research assistant in archival projects with audio-visual collections in Indian classical music, folk, community, and oral traditions. She holds an MSc degree from the Department of Media and Communication Studies, Savitribai Phule Pune University. Her master’s dissertation was a critical study of film archiving practices in India with an emphasis on the National Film Archive of India. She developed curricula for film archiving and curating for the postgraduate diploma program in Indian film studies at Pune University. She taught the first batch in fall 2018.

Ms. Subramanian participated as a Tata Trusts Scholar at the Film Preservation and Restoration Workshop India in 2017 and 2018, organized by the Film Heritage Foundation and International Federation of Film Archives. She holds a postgraduate certificate from the Film and Television Institute of India (2009–10), specializing in sound recording, and a BSc in electronics from Fergusson College. She worked as location sound recordist for director R. V. Ramani’s documentary Santhal Mill to Family Recall, which won the Silver Conch at the Mumbai International Film Festival in February 2018. She coordinated multiple ethnomusicology recording expeditions across India and Nepal from 2011 to 2014. She has also worked with IT start-ups and MNCs.

A graduate program in moving image archive studies from the U.S. will help Ms. Subramanian learn best practices in archiving in a diverse setting. On returning to India, she wants to create systems and methods for archival education by collaborating with governmental and non-governmental efforts. Her goal is to develop media archival practices that are sustainable and replicable across developing nations.