Profile

Radhika Suresh is a doctoral researcher in Digital Humanities at the Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur, where she is completing a PhD under the supervision of Dr Sajan Pillai. Her dissertation, Murals and Digitality: An Exploration of the Digital Remediation of Kerala Mural Paintings, examines how digital mediation transforms the viewing of Kerala mural paintings, with a focus on interface design, audience engagement, and the reconfiguration of sacred visual experience in digital space.

Her research combines theoretical inquiry in visual and media studies with practice-based work in digital archiving and immersive imaging. She is the creator of the Kerala Mural Archive, a born-digital repository of Kerala mural paintings, and has developed a reproducible methodology for 360° virtual tour creation and audience evaluation of temple murals. Her work has been accepted at major digital humanities venues including ADHO, DARIAH, and CSDH/SCHN.

She holds a Ministry of Education Research Fellowship (2021–present) and has qualified both NET (Assistant Professor eligibility) and GATE (English).

Education

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Digital Humanities (expected submission: December 2026)

Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur

Supervisor: Dr. Sajan Pillai

Thesis: Murals and Digitality: An Exploration of the Digital Remediation of Kerala Mural Paintings

Master of Arts, English Language and Literature (2019) Sree Sankara College, Kalady, Mahatma Gandhi University

Bachelor of Science, Physics (2017) Union Christian College, Aluva, Mahatma Gandhi University

Research Interests

Publications

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Suresh, R and Sajan Pillai. (under review). From Temple Pradakṣiṇa to Digital Scroll: Interface Performance in Kerala Murals. Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage.
Suresh, R and Sajan Pillai. (under review). Kerala Mural Paintings and the Reconfiguration of Material Religion in the Digital Age. Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief.
Suresh, R. (under review). Kerala Murals: Sacred Walls in Living Temples. Journal of Visual Art Practice.
Suresh, R. (under review). From Political Correctness to Politically Correct Patriarchy: Gender, Spectatorship, and “New Generation” Malayalam Cinema. Quarterly Review of Film and Video.

Other Publications

Suresh, R., & Pillai, S. (2026). From Capture to Engagement: A Reproducible Workflow for 360° Virtual Tours and Audience Evaluation of Sacred Kerala Temple Murals. Digital Arts and Humanities With and For Society: Building Infrastructures of Engagement (DARIAH), Rome, Italy. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20283045
Suresh, R., & Pillai, S. (2026). Walk the Sanctum: Live 360° Tour + Evaluation Workflow for Chemmanthatta Mahadeva Temple Murals. DARIAH Annual Event 2026: Digital Arts and Humanities With and For Society: Building Infrastructures of Engagement (DARIAH AE 2026), Rome, Italy. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20304585
Suresh, R. (2021). Trauma, history, and young adult fiction: A study of Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief. Sahityasetu, 11(2), Issue 62. [UGC-CARE Listed]

Conference Presentations and Acceptances

Forthcoming 2026

The Untranslatable Archive: Towards Digital Humanities from an Indic Perspective. Paper accepted at the Canadian Society for Digital Humanities / Société canadienne des humanités numériques (CSDH/SCHN) Annual Conference, 2026.
From Sanctum to Screen: Evaluating Audience Engagement in a 360° Virtual Tour of Kerala Murals. Short paper accepted at the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) Annual Conference, July 2026.

Summer Schools & Institutes (2026)

Selected participant, Digital Humanities Summer School, University of Oxford, 2026.
Selected participant, Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI), Montreal, 2026.

Presented (2025–2026)

From Capture to Engagement: A Reproducible Workflow for 360° Virtual Tours and Audience Evaluation of Sacred Kerala Temple Murals. Research poster accepted at the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH) Annual Event, May 2026.
Walk the Sanctum: Live 360° Tour + Evaluation Workflow for Chemmanthatta Mahadeva Temple Murals. Research poster accepted at the DARIAH Annual Event, May 2026.
Performing the Sacred Digitally: A Theoretical Inquiry into the Digital Remediation of Kerala Mural Paintings. Paper presented at On Culture and Performance, International Conference, Department of English, Sree Kerala Varma College, Thrissur, January 2026.
Gothic Narratives in the Digital Age: A Study of Ethersic’s The Fall of House Black. Paper presented at Spectres of the Past: Gothic Legacies and Contemporary Critique, International Conference, St. Teresa’s College, Ernakulam, December 2025.

Presented (earlier)

Fiction, Trauma and the Untold Histories: Second World War’s Untold Side in Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief. Paper presented at De-scribing History: New Directions in Historiography, St. Teresa’s College, Ernakulam, February 2020.
The Imposed Selfhood: An analysis of the identity crisis in Amish Tripathi’s Siva Trilogy. Paper presented at Interstitial Negotiations: Problems of Identity Formation, Ilahia College of Arts and Science, Muvattupuzha, March 2018.

Research Projects

Kerala Mural Archive (2023–ongoing) Creator and lead researcher. A born-digital archive of Kerala mural paintings with multilingual access (8 Indian languages). https://keralamuralarchive.in/

360° Virtual Tour and Audience Evaluation Methodology (2024–ongoing) Development of a reproducible workflow for immersive documentation and audience engagement evaluation of sacred Kerala temple murals. Piloted at Chemmanthatta Mahadeva Temple. Soon to be presented at DARIAH 2026 and ADHO 2026. https://keralamuralarchive.in/virtualtour/index.html

Fellowships and Awards

Research Fellowship, Ministry of Education, Government of India (2021–present)
GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering — English), 2021 National competitive examination; qualifies candidates for research fellowships and PhD admissions across India
NET (National Eligibility Test — Assistant Professor eligibility), 2019 Conducted by UGC; qualifies candidates for college and university teaching positions in India

Teaching and Professional Experience

Teaching Assistant, Digital Humanities (ongoing) Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur

Guest Lecturer, English (2021) SNM College Maliankara, Moothakunnam

Content Head (2021) SVAHUB Media, Ernakulam

Training and Workshops

Digital Storytelling (6-day immersive course), March 2026
Creative and Pedagogical Workshop on Literary, Performative, and Visual Arts (7-day, ICSSR-sponsored), May 2022
Digital Literatures and Literatures in the Digital (Ministry of Education short-term course), May 2022
Thinking Theory (state-level workshop), January 2020
Film Studies: The Basics (state-level workshop), December 2017