Scholars
Manisha Desai
University of Connecticut
Based in
United States
North America
Manisha Desai works at the intersection of gender, globalization, human rights, and climate justice with a geographic focus on India. In particular she has examined subaltern struggles and transnational feminist efforts that range from gender and global justice to decolonizing knowledge production.

Publications
Books
“Subaltern Movements in India: Gendered Geographies of Struggle Against Neoliberal Development.” Routledge, 2016. [Sole Author].
Issue Brief
Desai, P. 2022. “Going Beyond the Social: Communitarian Imaginaries as Inspirations for Rethinking the Eco-Social Contract?” UNRISD.
Special Issues of Journal
Co-editor, 2022. “Special Issue on bell hooks,” in Women, Gender and Family of Color.
Co-editor, 2022. “Special Issue on Crises and the (Re)Organizing of Gender and Work,” in Gender, Work, and Organization.
Desai M. & Rinaldo R. 2016. “Reorienting Gender and Globalization: Introduction to the Special Issue.” Qualitative Sociology.
Journal Articles (peer-reviewed)
Desai M. & Roy R. 2022. “Intersectional Coloniality in 19th Century India: The Sociological Praxis of Savitribai Phule and the Women Activists of Satya Shodhak Samaj (Truth Seeker Society).“ American Sociologist.
Desai M. & Vo T. 2021. “Immigrant Southeast and East Asian mothers’ transnational postpartum cultural practices: A meta-ethnography.” Women’s Health.
Desai M. 2020. “Beyond the Global North South: Southasian Feminist Imaginaries.” Special Issue of European Journal of Women’s Studies on Global South Feminism.
Desai M. & Rinaldo R. 2016. “Reorienting Gender and Globalization: Introduction to the Special Issue.” Qualitative Sociology, 39(3):1-15.
Desai M. 2016. “The Gendered Geographies of Struggle: The WSF and its sometimes overlapping other worlds.” Gender & Society 30(6):869-889.
Book Chapters (peer-reviewed)
Desai M. 2016. “Exploring the Persistence of Gendered Geographies of Global Justice Movements.” Pp: 121-131 In Jackie Smith, Michael Goodhart, Patrick Manning, and John Markoff, editors, Social Movements and World System Transformation. Paradigm Publishers.
Desai M. 2016. “Gendering Democracy: Insights from Four Decades of Feminist Activism in India.” Pp: 93-114 In Kenneth Bo Nielsen and Alf Gunvald Nilsen, editors, Democratizing Indian Democracy? Social Movements and the State in Contemporary India. Palgrave McMillan.
Desai M. 2015. “Critical Cartographies, Theories and Praxis of Transnational Feminisms.” Pp: 116-130 in Rawwida Baksh and Wendy Harcourt, editors, Handbook on Transnational Feminist Movements: Knowledge, Power, and Social Change. Oxford University Press.
Desai M. 2013. “The Possibilities and Perils of Scholar Activism and Activist Scholarship: Reflections on the Feminist Dialogues.” Pp: 89-107 in Jeffrey S. Juris and Alex Kashnabish, editors, Insurgent Encounters: Transnational Activism, Ethnography and the Political, Duke University Press.