Manisha Desai

Professor and Executive Director of The Center for Changing Systems of Power
Ph.D. Washington University, 1990
Manisha.Desai@stonybrook.edu

Areas of Interest

Gender and Globalization, Transnational Feminisms, Human Rights and Social Movements

CV

Bio

Manisha Desai is the Executive Director of Center for Changing Systems of Power and the Empowerment Trust Endowed Professor of Global Citizenship at Stony Brook University. Her areas of research and teaching include gender and globalization/development, transnational feminisms, global justice, particularly climate justice movements and human rights. She is a senior research associate of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development and a member of the Global Network for Research and Action for a new eco-social contract. She has served in many leadership capacities including as President of Sociologists for Women in Society and received several awards for her scholarship and mentoring.

 

Selected Publications

• 2025 Lost or Found? Human Rights in Eco-Social Justice Narratives. With Elaine Webster, Mara Ntona, and Mauricio Selgado. Open Global Rights. Rights https://www.openglobalrights.org/lost-or-found-human-rights-in-socio-ecological-justice-narratives
• 2025 Some reflections on "How should we think about globalization in a post globalization era?" Dialogues in Sociology. https://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/4CFHW2EDYEFI7XWBPXUE/full
• 2024 From Invisibility towards Justice: The march of the marginalized citizens of Mumbai. Special Issue of Miscellenia Geographica on Invisible Cities Revisited . Co-edited by Ken Foote and Maoz Azaryahu.
• 2024 Beyond Sustainable Development to Sustainable Societies: Insights from feminist, abolitionist, and indigenous climate justice movements. Special Issue of Sociology of Development 10(3):1-11 on “Sociology of Development through a Feminist Lens,” edited by Barbara Wejnert.
• 2022 Desai, Manisha. 2022. Going Beyond the Social: Communitarian Imaginaries as Inspirations for Rethinking the Eco-Social Contract? Geneva: UNRISD  https://www.unrisd.org/en/library/publications/going-beyond-the-social-communitarian-imaginaries-as-inspirations-for-rethinking-the-eco-social-contract .
• Desai, Manisha and Rianka Roy. 2022. Intersectional Coloniality: The Sociological  Praxis of Savitribai Phule and the Women Activists of Satya Shodhak Samaj (Truth Seeker Society). American Sociologist.
• Vo, Timothea and Manisha Desai. 2022. Immigrant and Southeast  Asian Women’s Postpartum Practices: A Meta-ethnography. Women’s Health.
• Roy, Rianka and Manisha Desai. 2022. “Krantijyoti (Revolutionary Light) and Gyanjyoti (Education Light) Savitribai Phule.” In Chico Herbison and David Dickens, edited: Neglected Theorists of Color.
• Desai, Manisha with Asmita Asaavari, Ruth Hernandez, Koyel Khan, Rianka Roy. 2021. Writing on self together: Collective Autoethnography as praxis of solidarity and  collective care during  the pandemic. Ch. 6 in In Melanie Heath, Akosua Darkwa, Josephine Beoku-Betts, and Bandana Purkayastha, edited. Global Feminist Autoethnographies During Covid-19: Displacements and Disruptions. Routledge.
• Desai,Manisha. 2020. Beyond the Global North South: Southasian Feminist Imaginaries. Special Issue of European Journal of Women’s Studies on Global South Feminism.