Hegde's work sits at the intersection of media studies, technology studies, activist communication, and social movements particularly focused on creative labor in the arts. He studies how technology change reshapes the creative arts and how labor activism has been employed to socially construct the implementation of new technologies in a way that ensures worker autonomy. Hegde views labor disputes and strikes at the advent of emergent technologies throughout the entertainment industry in film, TV, and music as key sites to reveal various points of tension between tech innovation and entertainment labor. His work seeks to understand how unionized entertainment workers negotiate space for themselves amidst tech-driven disruptions as well as how notions of creativity become reconfigured with new types of creative workers emerging alongside and through new technologies.

Before joining the PhD program, Hegde pursued a BFA in film/media arts and visual anthropology at Temple University where he developed an interest in media studies and ethnography. He moved to L.A. in 2018 after graduating to pursue freelance work in the entertainment industry where he became aware of the precarious position film production workers hold as freelancers with their unions serving as important spaces to negotiate their position within an industry that sits at the forefront of creative and technology development.

Hegde began his USC journey by obtaining an MS in digital social media from Annenberg, developing both a technical foundation in social media analytics and a critical lens to how social media-driven content creation has altered the nature of creative work in the entertainment industry. He is excited to implement the multifaceted skill sets he has gained over the years, with the intention to utilize his research to inform real-world activism and social change. Hegde is an advocate for a critical approach in engaging with media and technology to mediate the ever increasing interdependence of human and technology systems within the 21st century.

Hegde grew up in the Pacific Northwest, spending most of his childhood in the Bitter Lake neighborhood in North Seattle and the nearby suburb of Redmond. Washington. He has a lot of passion for all things Seattle sports/music/pop culture/history with much of his academic perspective being informed by the technology revolution of the 1990s and 2000s taking place within his backyard. Hegde is also a diehard L.A. Koreatown stan with all the great coffee shop recs, has been an avid vinyl record collector for over ten years with 300 albums in his still-growing collection, loves all things cinema and is a regular at American Cinematheque screenings at the Los Feliz 3 and Aero Theater, and a passionate urban explorer of Los Angeles neighborhoods and suburbs with a deep love for the history and fluorishing arts/culture of the city.