Debanuj DasGupta

DebanujDasGupta

Ph.D., Ohio State University (2016)

Office: AUST 433

Office phone: 860-486-5952

debanuj.dasgupta@uconn.edu

Curriculum vitae

Research Interests:

Social/Cultural Geography
F
eminist Geography
Geographies of Sexuality
International Development & Human Rights

UConn Geography Research Cluster:

Spatial Analysis of Social Issues

 

Dr. Debanuj DasGupta is Assistant Professor of Geography and Women’s, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Connecticut. Debanuj’s research and teaching focuses on racialized regulation of space, immigration detention, queer migrations, sustainable development, and the global governance of migration, sexuality, and HIV. Prior to his doctoral degree, Debanuj worked for over sixteen years within several international development agencies, HIV/AIDS, LGBT rights and immigrant rights organizations in India and the US. In 1994, Debanuj founded the first HIV prevention program for men who have sex with men, gay men, and transgender women in Kolkata. Since relocating to the United States, Debanuj has organized LGBT immigrants & asylum seekers in the New York tristate area.

Debanuj serves on the political geography editorial board of the Geography Compass, along with  serving on the board of Ethnic Geography Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers. He is Board-Co Chair of the Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies: CLAGS at the City University of New York.  He is the recipient of the Ford Foundation funded New Voices Fellowship, American Association of Geographers and National Science Foundation funded T. J. Reynolds National Award in Disability Studies, and the International AIDS Society’s Emerging Activist Award. 

Debanuj is currently completing a Mellon Humanities and National Endowment for the Humanities funded Junior Fellowship in Trans-Regional Studies: Inter-Asian Linkages & Connections through the Social Science Research Council. His project investigates the changing nature of legal recognition of transgender and intersex communities in South and South-East Asia. He was recently awarded the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) Award, and he is collaborating on a transnational research project about water security issues faced by women and transgender communities in South Asian countries.

He is the co-editor of Friendship As Social Justice Activism: Critical Solidarities in Global Perspective (University of Chicago Press), and Queering Digital India: Activisms, Identities and Subjectivities (University of Edinburgh Press). His scholarly work has been published in journals such as Disability Studies Quarterly, Contemporary South Asia, SEXUALITIESGender, Place & Culture, Emotions, Space, and Society, and The Scholar and the Feminist (S&F online).

 

Courses

GEOG 1000: Introduction to Geography

GEOG 2200: Introduction to Human Geography

GEOG 3000 / GEOG 5810:  Sex, Race, and Place

 

Selected Publications

Books

DasGupta - Friendship as Social Justice Activism
Friendship as Social Justice Activism:
Critical Solidarities in a Global Perspective

DasGupta - Queering Digital India

Queering Digital India:
Activisms, Identities, Subjectivities

Journal Articles

DasGupta, Debanuj and DasGupta, R.K. 2018. "Being out of place: Non-belonging and queer racialization in the U.K." Emotions, Space, and Society.  Vol 27. 31-38.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2018.02.008

DasGupta, R.K.  and DasGupta, D. 2017. “Intimate Subjects and Virtual Spaces: Rethinking Sexuality as a Category for Intimate Ethnographies” SEXUALITIES. First published online March, 2017. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1363460716677285

Di Feliciantonio, C. Gadelha, B. K & DasGupta, D. 2017. “‘Queer(y)ing’ Methodologies: Doing Fieldwork and Becoming Queer” Gender, Place, and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography (24) 3: 403-412. First published online May 2017. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0966369X.2017.1314950?journalCode=cgpc20

Nagar, I & DasGupta, D. 2015. “Public Kothi, and Private Love: Section 377, Religion, Perversity, and Lived Desire.” Contemporary South Asia 23 (2): 426-441.

DasGupta, D. & DasGupta. R.K. Queering Digital India: Activisms, Intimacies, and Subjectivities. Forthcoming, April, 2018. The University of Edinburgh Press.

Current Research Topics

Dr. DasGupta is currently working on three inter-related projects.

  1. The first project documents the geopolitics of immigration detention and the human rights abuses faced by transgender detainees within multiple US immigration detention facilities.
  2. The second project traces the shifting trends in the securitization of HIV.  Dr. DasGupta published articles about the US HIV ban on immigration, and is currently developing a new project about the inclusion of service members living with HIV within the US Army.
  3. The third project interrogates the economic and political shifts within present day India and their relationship with sexuality rights politics in post-socialist states such as West-Bengal.

His work has been published in journals such as Disability Studies Quarterly, Contemporary South Asia, SEXUALITIES, and the Scholar and the Feminist (S&F online). Prior to returning to school for his PhD, Debanuj worked for over sixteen years within several international development, HIV/AIDS, LGBT rights and immigrant rights organizations in India and the US. He is the recipient of the Ford Foundation funded “New Voices Fellowship,” American Association of Geographers national award in Disability Studies, and the International AIDS Society Emerging Activist Award.