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
Feminist 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, SEXUALITIES, Gender, Place & Culture, Emotions, Space, and Society, and The Scholar and the Feminist (S&F online).