Debotri Dhar

Dr. Debotri Dhar is a core WGS and International Institute faculty, DHRC Faculty Associate, and IRWG affiliate at the University of Michigan. She is also a faculty affiliate at the U-M Ford School of Public Policy's Center on Finance, Law and Policy, and has served as faculty advisor for the Ford School's Weiser Diplomacy Center Diplomacy Lab, a U-M collaboration with the US Department of State's Office of Global Partnerships. She earned a Masters in Women's Studies with distinction from Oxford University, Ph.D in Women's and Gender Studies from Rutgers University, and was a postdoctoral visiting scholar at Boston University.

Dr. Dhar's interdisciplinary teaching and research are broadly on women and well-being, and span South Asia and the US. A primary focus area is gender violence, and her new book on sexual violence and the postcolonial state is forthcoming from Routledge (London, New York, New Delhi). Challenging racial-colonial and dominant feminist framings of rape victims' suicides in India, the mixed methods study interrogates socio-economic and medico-legal barriers faced by marginalized women, and their agency, the economics and politics of care, impact of mass media and digital communication technologies, and offers some policy solutions. Dr. Dhar's work also includes violence prevention and community health education, along with education policy, access to higher education, women and girls' education, and pedagogy. She edited and introduced Education and Gender (Bloomsbury Academic: London, New York, New Delhi), co-edited Education in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Islands (Bloomsbury: London, New York, New Delhi, Sydney), and has published book chapters, peer-reviewed essays and articles in Feminist Formations and Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy. As a visiting scholar at the U-M Center for the Education of Women, she edited and introduced Love is Not a Word: The Culture and Politics of Desire (New Delhi: Speaking Tiger), and researched feminism, faith, and intimate partner violence. She also authored a study for Manavi, a South Asian American organization to address domestic violence and sexual assault, for a series supported by the US Department of Justice, Office of Violence Against Women. Dr. Dhar is interested in gendered representations in literature, traditional and new media as well, and has published related book chapters and scholarly articles in Postcolonial Text, Istor, and elsewhere.

A public scholar, she writes on women's work and well-being for popular media too, such as her column/blog 'She Thinks' for The Times of India, articles on 'Women in the Workplace,' 'Women in Diplomacy,' and 'Technology-Facilitated Gender Violence' in Outlook, and 'A Sense of Belonging' in OPEN Magazine. A public speaker in several languages, Dr. Dhar has delivered conference papers, lectures, and invited presentations at Yale, Harvard, Boston, Princeton, U Penn, Michigan, Delhi, Oxford etc. while also giving public talks such as at the British Council and non-university settings accessible to a wider public. Dr. Dhar was the recipient of an Excellence Doctoral Fellowship, Linda Rothman Teaching Award in Women's Studies, South Asian Studies Award, Institute for Research on Women Fellowship, and U-M Center for the Education of Women Jean Campbell visiting scholarship. She served as an expert panelist for the National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, a reviewer for the National Women's Studies Association conference papers, evaluator for the Indian Institute for Advanced Study fellowship, and has lent her expertise to organizations across sectors.

Courses: Dr. Dhar teaches Feminist Thought; Sexual Violence and the State: Global Perspectives; and Women and Well-Being in Literature (cross-listed with English Literature and Culture). She has also taught Knowledge and Power: Issues in Women's Leadership; Non-profit Management; Gender and Representation; Transnational Feminisms (cross-listed with Religious Studies); Women, Culture, Society; Gender and Bollywood; The Gendered Body; Introduction to Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; and Doing Feminist Research: Theory and Practice.

Additional notes: Dr. Dhar is the founder of the Hummingbird Global Leaders Forum, to promote leadership across sectors and generate policy dialogues, and the Hummingbird Global Writers' Circle, which fosters a love of books, cultural exchange and global understanding by bringing authors and communities together in different parts of the United States and the world. An author of novels and short stories, Debotri's literary fiction includes Postcards from Oxford: Stories of Women and Travel (London, Kolkata), her novel The Courtesans of Karim Street (New Delhi) which was shortlisted for a young writers' award, A Flute Called Radha which was published by Penguin Random House, and others. She served as a judge for the Barbara Deming Fund for women writers (New York), and for The Best Asian Short Stories (Singapore), a contest for creative writers in Asia and the global Asian diaspora. Other interests include Indian classical music, cinema, painting, and the culinary arts.