About Debotri Dhar

Dr. Debotri Dhar is an award-winning author-educator, academic, editor, and founder, Hummingbird Global Writers' Circle and Hummingbird Global Leaders Forum. A leading voice in global/international studies, with an emphasis on Asia and America, her interdisciplinary work focuses on international relations; women's studies, with special attention to policies (educational, socio-legal, financial, health) addressing gender violence in war and peace; humanitarian education policies and pedagogies; and literature, culture and well-being.

Debotri has lived in India, USA, and UK. A traveler across countries, a scholar across disciplines, and a writer across genres – academic and popular, creative nonfiction and fiction - she has written books, essays, policy papers, newspaper columns, novels, stories, and edited volumes. A public speaker, Dr. Dhar has lectured or presented papers at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Boston, U-Penn, Michigan, Delhi, Banaras Hindu University, and Oxford, non-university settings such as the British Council, New Jersey Council for the Humanities, and venues accessible to a wider audience. She has served as a reviewer for the National Endowment for the Humanities and Indian Institute for Advanced Study fellowships, National Women's Studies Association conference papers, and for publishers and journals across the humanities and social sciences, and as a judge for the Barbara Deming Fund for women writers (New York) and Kitaab's Best Asian writing series (Singapore). 

Dr Dhar earned a BA (Honors) in Economics from Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi University (India), Masters in Women's Studies, with distinction, from Oxford University (UK), Ph.D from Rutgers, and was a visiting researcher at Boston University. From 2015-23 she lectured at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, holding affiliations with the Ford School of Public Policy's Center for Finance, Law and Policy, Center for Education of Women, and Institute for Research on Women and Gender, collaborated across policy, public health, education, law, literature, and business units, and served as faculty advisor for a policy project on gender-based violence, through a public diplomacy initiative of the US Department of State's Office of Global Partnerships and Gender Policy Council in the White House.

Dr. Dhar has appeared on radio, television, podcasts, and writes for newspapers and magazines (such as her blog 'She Thinks' for the Times of India; global affairs column 'Animal Instincts' for The Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle; gender series for Outlook Magazine; and on South Asian literature, and founding her traveling writers circle in Open Magazine and the Hindustan Times.) 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 speaking on a lighter NPR-affiliated radio show about the politics and ethics of love, Debotri's hobbies are 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.