Neil Potnis is an Indian American video artist and researcher whose work investigates how visual media shapes political knowledge. He is the founder of Disruptve Studio, a nonpartisan media lab exploring visual culture and social movements within the South Asian diaspora.

 

He is currently a PhD student in International & Transcultural Studies at Columbia University, where he serves as a Doctoral Fellow and Research Associate at the Center for Sustainable Futures. His research examines political movements as sites of civic exposure, combining ethnographic inquiry and visual media to document how participants encounter and interpret questions of climate justice and social inequality. Trained across design, media studies, and sociology, Potnis holds an MSc in Computational Design Practices from Columbia GSAPP and a BS (Hons) in Arts and Entertainment Technologies from The University of Texas School of Design and Creative Technologies.

 

His interdisciplinary practice spans documentary film, image-based research, and computational media. His recent work was featured at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, where he used image-compositing techniques to prototype low-carbon earthen construction systems. Prior to his doctoral studies, Potnis served as a Design Fellow at Columbia Entrepreneurship and Columbia World Projects, leading social impact workshops for the Obama Foundation Scholars. He has also worked at Columbia’s Natural Materials Lab, developing life-cycle assessment tools for public learning and advocacy, and at labr, where he contributed to the development of the first climate marketplace oriented toward public participation.

 

Across his practice, Potnis examines how multimedia functions as a site of civic learning. His work explores how visual narratives reframe research for public audiences and shape the conditions under which political action becomes visible.