D. Venkat Rao teaches at the Nalanda University, Rajgir. He did Postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago, University of California, Berkeley, and University of Washington, Seattle. He taught at various universities in India and at the University of Washington in the USA. In addition to books in English and Telugu he has published several articles in national and international journals. His recent work includes Envisioning Voice and the Aphasic Ears: Of Sanskrit Reflective Traditions Today (Bloomsbury, 2025), India, Europe and the Question of Cultural Difference (Routledge, 2021), Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions: Towards a Liveable Learning (Springer, 2021), Critical Humanities from India: Contexts, Issues, Futures (Routledge, 2018); and his other publications include Cultures of Memory in South Asia (Springer, 2014), In Citations: Readings in Area Studies of Culture (1999), a translation of Ashis Nandy’s Intimate Enemy into Telugu (2005). Earlier he translated into English a Telugu intellectual autobiography called The Last Brahmin (2007, 2012, 2017). He has a full-length work on literary-cultural criticism in Telugu entitled Saamskritika Chaanakyaalu (2005). His areas of interest include literary and cultural studies, image studies, epic traditions, visual cultures, comparative thought, translation, and mnemocultures. He has designed several courses interfacing areas of culture, technology and literary, cultural studies and Sanskrit traditions. He developed a research programme under the rubric of Critical Humanities. He is the editor of the Routledge book series on Critical Humanities Across Cultures.