Dr Rohit K Dasgupta

Dr Rohit K Dasgupta is Associate Professor of Gender and Sexuality and Deputy Head of Department (Research).

Prior to his current role, Dr Dasgupta was Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow where he currently is Honorary Senior Research Fellow. He previously held teaching and research posts at Loughborough University, University of Southampton, University of Sussex, University of West London and University of the Arts London. He has also held visiting fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania and Fordham University in New York. He has experience in policy making and political strategy for a number of years as elected councillor in the London Borough of Newham in the areas of Equalities, Social Justice and Culture.

Using ethnographic and creative methodologies he has explored the relationship between sexuality, class and belonging in contemporary India which led to his first monograph Digital Queer Cultures in India: Politics, Intimacies & Belonging (Routledge, 2017) and the subsequent books Queering Digital India: Activisms, Identities, Subjectivities (Edinburgh University Press, 2018); Social Media, Sexuality & Sexual Health Advocacy in Kolkata, India (Bloomsbury, 2018) and Friendship as Social Justice Activism (Seagull/University of Chicago Press, 2018), which received an Honourable Mention by Pen America.

He currently edits two book series: Ethnographic Innovations, South Asian Perspectives (with Niharika Banerjea & Paul Boyce) for Routledge and South Asian Screens (with Sangita Gopal) for Bloomsbury.

Expertise

queer politics, diaspora, media & cultural production, cultural labour

Dr Dasgupta's current research interests are in cultural and queer politics in South Asia and the diaspora. He has recently completed a British Academy funded project on South Asian Queer diasporic organising and cultural production in Britain and a Carnegie Trust funded project on Queer film festivals and community making in India and is about to start a three-year AHRC funded project 'Crafting Sustainability & Equitability', which will explore cultural labour in the Indian handicraft sector with an aim to address inequalities of gender, sexuality, religion, and caste from an intersectional perspective.

He has recently published the book Desi Queers: LGBTQ+ South Asians & Cultural Belonging in Britain (Hurst & Co) and is working on India's Imperial Formations: Cultural Perspectives (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press).

He is also particularly interested in the role of digital culture and media for social change in relation to activism and intimate community making.

He has received numerous grants and his research has been funded over the years by Wellcome Trust, Royal Society of Edinburgh, British Academy, Carnegie Trust, UKRI India and AHRC.

Teaching

Rohit is the director for the MSc Gender (Sexuality) programme

• GI421 Sexuality, Gender and Culture
• GI422 Transnational Sexual Politics

PhD Supervision

Member of the supervisory teams of Radhika Pradhan, Dhwani and Yihan Wei.