About Debotri Dhar

Debotri Dhar is an award-winning author-educator, academic, editor, consultant, and founder, Hummingbird Global Writers' Circle and Hummingbird Global Leaders Forum. Dr. Dhar is an interdisciplinary and intersectoral expert in women's studies and global studies, with a focus on South Asia and the Indo-Pacific. 

Debotri has lived multiple lives in India, the United States, United Kingdom, and other spaces in-between. A traveler across countries, a scholar across disciplines, and a writer across genres – academic and popular, creative nonfiction and fiction - she has authored books, articles, essays, policy papers, newspaper columns, stories, and edited volumes. A public speaker, Dr. Dhar has lectured or presented at universities such as Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Boston, U-Penn, Michigan, Delhi, and Oxford, non-university settings including the British Council, the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, and venues more accessible to a wider audience. She has served as an expert panelist and reviewer for the National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, Indian Institute for Advanced Study fellowship, the German Foundation of Peace Research, and for leading publishers and journals in the humanities and social sciences, and a judge for the Barbara Deming Fund for women writers, New York, and the Best Asian writing series, Singapore, among others.  She lends her consulting and pro-bono expertise across sectors.

Dr Dhar earned a BA (Honors) in Economics from Delhi University (India), Masters in Women's Studies, with distinction, from Oxford University (UK), Ph.D in Women's and Gender Studies from Rutgers, and was a visiting researcher at Boston University. For some years she lectured at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor as core faculty, holding affiliations with the Ford School of Public Policy's Center for Finance, Law and Policy, Center for the Education of Women, International Institute, and Institute for Research on Women and Gender; partnered with the Ford International Policy Center and Weiser Diplomacy Center, such as by advising a policy research collaboration with the US Department of State's Office of Global Partnerships as shaped by the Gender Policy Council in the White House; and collaborated across the Schools of Public Policy, Public Health, Education, Law, Medicine, Literature, Arts and Sciences, and Ross School of Business. (Read 'Roots &Wings' on her journey in the words of a student.) 

Dr. Dhar communicates with the wider public via radio and television, podcasts, newspapers and magazines (such as her blog 'She Thinks' for the Times of India and Economic Times, her international relations and global affairs column 'Animal Instincts' for The Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle, and her women's series for Outlook.) When she is not giving a television interview on the impact of the Taliban on women's rights in Afghanistan, or recording a podcast on gender violence, or appearing on a lighter NPR-affiliated radio show to speak on the politics and ethics of love, Debotri's hobbies include Indian classical music, painting, cinema, and the culinary arts.  She loves mountains and middle mists, raindrops and riverside walks, the first snow of the season, food, friendship - and the resilience of hummingbirds.