Professor Sanjeev Chatterjee Receives Fulbright Award to Teach Multimedia Storytelling in India

University of Miami School of Communication Professor and award-winning filmmaker Sanjeev Chatterjee has received a Fulbright-Nehru Research Scholar Award and will spend six months in Kolkata, India teaching multimedia storytelling to shed insight on a crucial environmental issue impacting communities surrounding the East Kolkata Wetlands.

Originally from Patna, Bihar in eastern India, Chatterjee will be working with students at Jadavpur University to create a multimedia website that will bring better public understanding of urban waste utilization and recovery.

The East Kolkata Wetlands are located east of the city of Kolkata and cover about 77 miles that include salt marshes and salt meadows. The wetlands are used to treat Kolkata's sewage, and the nutrients contained in the wastewater sustain fish farms and agriculture that feed surrounding communities. A city of 12 million inhabitants, Kolkata does not have a sewage treatment plant and the wetlands act as its “kidneys,” naturally cleansing the 160 million gallons of urban waste daily. The East Kolkata Wetlands were named a Ramsar site in 2002. The class will interview scientists, fish farmers, neighborhood consumers, government officials and other stakeholders.

“I’m excited about this Fulbright Award because it will allow me to engage with students in a process of discovery in India about a key urban issue,” Chatterjee said. “These students will be learning outside the classroom and will be sharing information on a very important issue.”

Chatterjee embarks to India on July 18.

Chatterjee is no stranger to issues that affect our global environment. During his recent role as director of UM’s Knight Center for International Media, which is committed to producing compelling visual media to solve the world's most difficult issues, he co-directed One Water, an award-winning documentary about water challenge around the globe that was broadcast on the Discovery Networks Planet Green Channel.

The Knight Center also supported Aguas Negras, a multimedia website about wastewater farming in Mexico City that first introduced Chatterjee to this issue and gained his interest to explore it further.

Chatterjee is currently working on One City, a non-verbal short documentary film that explores imminent threats to contemporary cities around the world.

“To have a teacher and filmmaker of Prof. Chatterjee’s stature is going to greatly benefit students of Jadavpur University, which has a strong commitment to environment issues,” says Abhijit Roy, an associate professor of Film Studies at the School of Media, Communication and Culture, Jadavpur University. “Together we will be creating a vibrant inter-disciplinary group of young people who will continue to work beyond this project in the field of multimedia documentation of water issues to meaningfully shape environment policies in India.”