Professor Desai discussed the politics of transnational projects to build links and solidarities between movements of women activists differently situated in local and global systems of power. She shared insights gained from sustained engagements with the dynamic ways in which localized movements challenge global injustices while insisting on differences.
How do differently situated and subordinated groups learn from one another? How do we build bonds of solidarity necessary to sustain a global movement for justice?
Dr. Manisha Desai is a professor of Sociology and Asian & Asian American Studies at the University of Connecticut. She is committed to social justice and decolonizing knowledge. Her research interests involve Gender and Globalization, Transnational Feminisms and women's movements, Human Rights movements, and Contemporary Indian Society.
She has written several books including Gender, Family, and Law in a Globalizing Middle East and South Asia; Gender and the Politics of Possibilities: Rethinking Globalization; and Women's Activism and Globalization: Linking Local Struggles to Transnational Politics.
Desai was the 2015 Sociologist for Women in Society's (SWS) Distinguished Feminist Lecturer, she has held several elected positions and served on several boards with the International Sociological Association, American Sociological, the American Sociological Review, and the International Feminist Journal of Politics.
In her free time, Dr. Desai enjoys teaching yoga and taking part in Indian classical dance in the Bharat Natyam style.
Gender and the Politics of Possibilities: Rethinking Globalization by 
Subaltern Movements in India: Gendered Geographies of Struggle against Neoliberal Development by 
Family, Gender, and Law in a Globalizing Middle East and South Asia by 
Women's Activism and Globalization: Linking Local Struggles and Transnational Politics by 
The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Women's Issues Worldwide. Asia and Oceania. by 
