Debanuj DasGupta is Associate Professor of Feminist Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara. Debanuj’s research and teaching focuses on the global governance of migration, sexuality, and HIV. Debanuj utilizes collaborative scholar & activist research methods in order to write about the political potentials of trauma experienced by LGBTQ immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. Prior to UCSB, Debanuj was Assistant Professor of Geography and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Connecticut (2016-2020). Debanuj served as Board Co-Chair of the Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS) at the City University of New York, between 2017-2022, and is on the editorial board of Geography Compass.

Debanuj is currently working on completing his monograph titled, Queer Migrations in Three Meditations that documents the entanglements between HIV/AIDS, the global War on Terror and the consolidation of the national-security state during the past three decades in the US. Debanuj is completing a graphic novel, tentatively titled COVID-19 Pandemic and Trans/Queer Life-Making in South Asia. The graphic novel is a collaboration with LGBTQIA+ activists from Kolkata, Imphal, Moirang, and Dhaka along with artists Jit Ray and Rima Ray from Mad Earth Designs. Debanuj’s new research is about queer gastronomy in contemporary urban India, and queer migrations in Argentina. As a feminist geographer, Debanuj remains interested in trans/queer place-making and world writing.

Debanuj’s scholarly work has been published in journals such as GLQ, Journal of Human Rights, Human Geography, Women’s Studies in Communication, Disability Studies Quarterly, Contemporary South Asia, SEXUALITIES, Gender, Place & Culture, and the Scholar and the Feminist (S&F online). She is the co-editor of Queer Then and Now: The David R. Kessler Lectures 2002-2020 (Feminist Press); 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).

He has been the recipient of several prestigious awards such as the Engaging the Humanities Research Award from the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI); Social Science Research Council (SSRC) Junior Scholar Award in Trans-Regional Studies: Inter-Asian Contexts and Connections; The Global Challenges Research Fund (UK) from the British Department for International Development (DFID); as well as fellowships from the Salzburg Global Forum, the United Nations Development Program and the German Government SZ. Debanuj is a survivor of the detention/prison industrial complex and has previously lived as an undocumented immigrant in the US for over a decade. Prior to joining academia, Debanuj has worked for over twenty years in movements for sexual liberation and migrant justice in both the US & India.