Ramesh N. Rao is a professor of communication studies at Columbus State University. Having worked in India briefly as a bank officer, a schoolteacher, and a copy editor for a major newspaper, he decided to pursue further studies in the US, and earned his MS in Communication from the University of Southern Mississippi, and his PhD in Communication from Michigan State University. His PhD thesis was on the nature of power in hostage negotiations.
Ramesh Rao has taught a variety of communication courses, from public speaking to intercultural communication, and from persuasion to mass communication for over thirty years, starting at Michigan State University and then at Truman State University in Missouri, Longwood University in Virginia, and now at Columbus State University in Georgia. He began writing for internet portals like Sulekha in the mid-1990s and considers himself one of the early “internet warriors” for the Indian cause. Having written for a variety of newspapers and magazines in the US, India, and the UK, Ramesh Rao now edits India Facts, offers advice to Sewa International on matters of media outreach and public relations, while continuing to teach at Columbus State University. Some of his writing is archived on his website.
In terms of his academic research interests, Ramesh Rao has presented numerous papers on Indian American identity, the coverage of India and Hinduism in Western media, and the depiction of India and Hinduism in intercultural communication textbooks. He has co-authored a book on intercultural communication, titled Intercultural Communication: The Indian Context, and is working on another co-authored book, tentatively titled Drawing from the Past, Forging a Future – A New Thrust for Indian Communication Research. Hindu identity and the Indian presence in the twenty-first century need to be carefully, assertively, and constructively presented to the global audience as the pressure builds up from aggressive political and religious ideologies and groups that seek to programmatically pursue their monopolistic and unsustainable agendas, Ramesh Rao believes.
A member of the Indic Academy, Ramesh Rao is fond of playing and watching tennis, listening to Carnatic and Hindustani classical music, and occasionally foray into the kitchen to cook his favorite Mysuru region food. An avid reader, he keeps buying books that he hopes to, one day, when he retires, finish reading.
Ramesh Rao lives in Fortson, GA, with his wife Sujaya. Their son Sudhanva is now a freshman at the University of Georgia where he is majoring in biochemistry and economics.
