Dr.Piyush Roy, is an Indian National Film Award winning critic-columnist, an international author, curator, filmmaker and founding dean and professor at the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences in RV University, Bengaluru. Former editor of Stardust and StarWeek, he has authored over 1000 media publications working at senior reporting positions in The Indian Express and Hindustan Times, and published across The Times of India, The Asian Age, Society magazine, Screen, The New Indian Express and Orissa Post, where he wrote the Sunday Talkies column for eight years. Presently, he writes the Friday Talkies column in The Hindu. Author of five books, his latest, Appreciating Melodrama: Theory and Practice in Indian Cinema and Television (Bloomsbury 2022) argues for reviewing Indian cinema using Indian aesthetic philosophies. His first feature film, Pleasures Prejudice Pride: An Indian Way of Filmmaking was the focus of a multi-city seminar-screening tour across seven UK universities (2019), and his latest documentary, The Monarch of the Blue Mountain (2023), explores the timeless, universal appeals of Sri Jagannath culture and consciousness. An advisory board member of Global University Film Awards (Hong Kong), he’s been on the jury of Power Brands-Bollywood Film Journalists Awards, the Star Plus Writers Program, Kautik International Film Festival, and Founder-Festival Director of Edinburgh Festival of Indian Films & Documentaries. In 2017, he was invited by Queen Elizabeth II to the UK-India Year of Culture’s official inauguration at Buckingham Palace featuring eminent Indians from civil society, politics, sports, arts and culture. Dr. Roy, an alumnus of IIMC Dhenkanal and SIBM Pune, holds an M.A. in International Journalism (Cardiff University) and M.Sc. in Film Studies and Ph.D. in South Asian Studies from the University of Edinburgh, UK.