Guha Shankar

Guha Shankar is senior folklife specialist at the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., where he develops a range of multi-media productions, fieldwork initiatives and public outreach programs. He co-directs the Civil Rights History Project, an initiative that documents, preserves and provides access to the personal narratives of activists in the Black Freedom Struggle. He coordinates Ancestral Voices, a collections management and co-curation project undertaken in collaboration with indigenous communities.

In 2024, the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums (ATALM) recognized his significant contributions to the preservation and revitalization of Indigenous cultural heritage through archival repatriation and documentary training programs with a Guardian of Culture and Lifeways International Award. Shankar draws upon his background in visual anthropology to produce documentary films and audio-visual media on community life and cultural traditions, such as the archival film “Alan Lomax Goes North” (2015) and a reconstruction (in progress) of the film “The Land Where the Blues Began” (first released in 1979). His research interests and publications include issues surrounding intangible cultural heritage and intellectual property, cultural politics and performance in the Caribbean, and developments in the field of ethnographic media production and preservation. Shankar earned his Ph.D. in 2003 from the Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin, in the graduate program in Folklore and Public Culture.