Associate Professor, Anthropology 
Anthropology Graduate Program Director and Advisor
Ph.D., Rutgers University

Office: Science and Research 2, Suite 122
Email: dsen2@central.uh.edu

Biographical Summary:

Professor Debarati Sen was born in Darjeeling, India, and raised in Calcutta (now Kolkata). She earned a BA in Sociology (honors) from Presidency College (Calcutta University) and an MA and MPhil in Sociology from Delhi School of Economics (Delhi University) before pursuing her Ph.D. in Anthropology at Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ). She joined UH in Spring 2021.

Professor Sen is an interdisciplinary cultural anthropologist. She is an ethnographer and theorist of labor, sustainable development, ethnic sub-nationalism, and embodied practices of health and wellbeing. In her two decades of research and advocacy work, she used ethnographic methods with keen attention to historiography and political economy. Her theoretical repertoire to interrogate intersecting issues of caste, ethnicity, gender, and national identity.

Her specific regional expertise is in the strategic borderland areas of the Eastern Himalayas in India (Darjeeling district in particular). She examines the predicaments of tenuous border-life and its impacts on everyday life and aspirations of ethnic minorities in some of the most fragile areas of the Indian subcontinent affected by protracted conflicts over cultural and economic marginality. While grounded in cultural anthropology, her research and public engagements are influenced by her training in Sociology, Cultural Geography, Political Economy, Development Studies, Social History, and South Asia and Himalayan Studies.

Research Keywords:

Sustainability, International Development, Labor, Food, Gender, Ethnic Sub-nationalism, Transnationalism, Mental Health and Wellbeing, Social Science Pedagogy, South Asia, Himalayas, Southeast Texas 

Research Projects and Publications:

Professor Sen's first major research project was a longitudinal ethnography of sustainability practice in Darjeeling focusing on issues of fair trade and gender justice. This research culminated in her award-winning monograph: Everyday Sustainability: Gender Justice and Fair Trade Tea in Darjeeling (Albany: SUNY Press, 2017; Series: Praxis: Theory in Action). The book examines gendered mobilizations around sustainable development in rural India, drawing attention to issues of social sustainability at the community level. She highlights how poor Nepali women understand sustainability initiatives in rural India — their discourses and practices around organic tea farming, interpretations, and hopes for a sustainable future. Going beyond numbers and soundbites about global sustainability, the book presents critical data on community-level cultural and economic mobilizations around sustainability policies, particularly the labor and entrepreneurial practices promoted by states and multilateral institutions to achieve international sustainability standards. Her book emphasizes the need for a critical community-based approach to sustainability practice emphasizing intersectional issues of gendered aspiration, ethnic identity, and labor. 

Gastrofeminism: Food, Care, Resilience, and Justice in a Turbulent World (under review)

Subnational Enterprise: Vigilant Minorities, Militarization, and Tenuous Belongings of Gorkhas in Contemporary India (in preparation)

She co-edited two special issues in prominent journals: In 2024, Gastronomica: The Journal of Food Studies (University of California Press) titled “Gastrofeminism.” In 2021 she co-edited a special issue of the Journal of South Asian Development titled "Women's Collectives and Social Transformations in South Asia: Negotiations, Navigations and Self-Making." 

Her articles have been published in refereed journals like Gastronomica: A Journal of Food Studies, Peace Prints, Feminist Studies, Society and Natural Resources, Journal of Political Ecology, Environment and Society, Journal of South Asian Development, Contemporary South Asia, Critique of Anthropology, South Asia Chronicle, Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment, Anthropology in Action, and Anthropology of Work Review. She makes regular contributions to prominent anthologies and handbooks in her line of research. 

National Recognition/Awards and Grants:

In 2018, Professor Sen’s monograph Everyday Sustainability won two major national-level book awards: The International Studies Association's book award for the Global Development Section and the Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize from the National Women's Studies Association https://www.nwsa.org/page/AnzalduaPrize. In 2019, her book also received an honorable mention for the Michelle Rosaldo Book Prize of the Association for Feminist Anthropology (American Anthropological Organization). In 2023 she received the Knowledge Unlatched Award State University of New York (SUNY) Press to make her monograph open access. Read details here: https://sunypress.edu/Books/E/Everyday-Sustainability

Her research has been funded with grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, US National Science Foundation DDIG, Princeton University's Office of Population Research, Columbia University, Rutgers University (among other institutions).

Teaching and Mentoring:

Professor Sen’s critical pedagogy draws from her academic training in educational institutions in India and USA to include theoretical and methodological perspectives that question the canon of contemporary Anthropology. She takes a keen interest in mentoring work in her communities of practice in and beyond the university space. Her PhD and MA students have found positions in reputed academic institutions and non-profits. At present she continues her work of training and guiding students as Director of the MA Anthropology Program at the department of Anthropology and Comparative Studies at UH Professor Sen teaches courses in the core curriculum of both the MA and BA/BS in Anthropology at UH. 

Current Courses Offerings: ANTH 2351: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology; ANTH 4310: Theories of Culture; ANTH 3342/ANTH 6342: Food and Culture; ANTH 3391: Global Ethnographies of Labor/ANTH 6395; ANTH 6300: Anthropological Theory

Upcoming Course Offerings: ANTH 3334: Intercultural Dynamics of Conflict and Peace; ANTH 4366: Transnational Himalayas: People, Culture, and Everyday Sustainability; ANTH 3341: Critical Political Ecology

**Prospective MA students wishing to be mentored by her in their MA journey can email and set up a call to check compatibility before/after they have applied to the MA program.