Rahul Kumar is a Ph.D. candidate in the Film and Media Studies program (Department of English). He obtained his BA and MA degrees in History from University of Delhi (SGTB Khalsa College) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (Centre for Historical Studies) respectively. Additionally, he holds an M.Phil. in Cinema Studies from the School of Arts & Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and an MA in Critical & Cultural Studies from the University of Pittsburgh.

His dissertation explores the interconnections between Bombay cinema and the Hindi public sphere through their encounters with popular print in the North Indian mofussil spaces (1960s-1990s). By examining the multiple planes of existence within the realm of popular cinematic print, including lowbrow film magazines and critical and quasi-literary publications, along with other filmic paraphernalia like songbooks and pocketbooks, his work complicates the concept of the mofussil as a cultural space and offers a deeper understanding of the dynamics at play within these various forms of print media. His research and writings also overlap with Classical Hollywood Cinema, film piracy, archives and ethnographic/taxidermic media.

He teaches undergraduate courses on composition and film and media at the University of Pittsburgh. Before joining Pitt, he was an assistant professor in the Liberal Arts program at Apeejay Stya University, Gurgaon, where he taught courses on environmental history and cinema. In addition to his academic work, he likes collecting vintage magazines and comic books, and is involved in building and curating an open access online archive of popular print on South Asian film and media.