Nandini Sikand is a Professor at an interdisciplinary film and media studies program at Lafayette College, a liberal arts school in Pennsylvania. Sikand’s documentary and experimental films have screened and won awards at over 100 domestic and international film festivals. Their work has aired on PBS and has been awarded grants from The Guggenheim Foundation, The Jerome Foundation, the Center for Asian American Media, and they are a two-time awardee of New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA). Their films include, The Bhangra Wrap (1995), Don’t Fence Me In (1998), Amazonia (2001), In Whose Name? (2004), Soma Girls (2009), and Cranes of Hope (2011), Slightest Shifts (2012) and One, if by Land (2015) and Inside/Outside (2019). Sikand produced the documentary Mahasweta Devi: Witness, Advocate, Writer (2001) and is currently a producer on in love, in memory. In television, they have worked as a producer and director on projects for Channel Four: UK, Ovation: the Arts Network, HBO, Oxygen, and The History Channel. Sikand has served on the board of directors of Women Make Movies, a non-profit feminist media distribution organization from 1997-2006 and was on the Fulbright IIE National Selection committee for film and video for 2008-2011.

Nandini choreographs and performs regularly with their neo-classical Odissi dance company, Sakshi Productions. Their dance work has been funded by LMCC (Lower Manhattan Cultural Council), the Asian American Arts Alliance and Joyce Soho and combines the use of film imagery, live music and elements unique to Indian theatre and performance. They are also the Associate Director/Choreographer of Harmattan Theater (www.harmattantheater.com), a performance group committed to an environmentally and socially-engaged theater.

In 2013-14, Nandini was awarded an American Association of University Women (AAUW) postdoctoral fellowship towards their book project, Languid Bodies, Grounded Stances: The Curving Pathway of Neoclassical Odissi Dance, published by Berghahn Books (2016). In 2019, they completed Inside/Outside, a feature documentary film about incarcerated women and the challenges of reentry in the Lehigh Valley for which they were awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2018. They are currently working on two book projects titled Visualizing the Thug(gee): A History of Colonialism, Race and Criminality and Parenting in Pennsyltucky.