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B.A. (Mohanlal Sukhadia University)


B.Ed (Mohanlal Sukhadia University)


M.A. (JNU); M.Phil. (JNU); Ph.D. (JNU)


 

Dr. Dhiren Borisa

Assistant Professor

Email dborisa@jgu.edu.in
Connect with me
ORCID ID 0000-0002-2138-2269
Key Expertise Geographies of Sexualities, Urban Studies, Queer City-making, Critical Caste Studies, Dalit Studies, gender and sexuality studies, queer studies, Politics of Knowledge Production, Queer and Feminist Ethnographic and Collaborative Research, Digital Humanities and Cartography

B.A. (Mohanlal Sukhadia University)


B.Ed (Mohanlal Sukhadia University)


M.A. (JNU); M.Phil. (JNU); Ph.D. (JNU)


 


Biography

Dhiren Borisa is a Dalit queer activist, poet and a urban sexual geographer and teaches courses on gender and sexuality studies  at the Jindal Global Law School. He has been a Global Fellow (Education) at the School of International Relations at University of St Andrews (2024-25) and was an Urban Studies Foundation International fellow at University of Sheffield for 2022-23. He has also been an honorary visiting fellow (non-residential) at the School of Geography, Geology and the Environment, University of Leicester (2020-23) and an early career visiting fellow at the Leicester Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Leicester, UK (2019). 

Dhiren obtained his Ph.D. from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi on queer cartographies of desires in Delhi. His research analyses how desire shapes the city we live and produce, asking how we can use sex as an archive for reading the city. He centres lower caste and working class queer desires which are often marginalized to reimagine sexual geographies of freedom and futures. Using rich ethnographies of queer nightlife, cruising spaces, sexual transactions in moving public and semi-public infrastructures, and mapping the city through gay dating apps, he asks: If global and local media discourses tell us that our cities are sexy, who exactly gets to be sexy in our city? His work through an auto-ethnographic storytelling of places, people and precarities explores ephemera as a social space of survival of desires for many who are at the margins of the already marginalized queer desires. 

As a human geographer and a scholar of geographies of sexualities from the global south he documents and interprets trans, queer, and feminist transnational South Asian cultures, employing intersectional and decolonial understandings both in India and amongst diasporic queer worldings. As an activist-scholar located in and working from the Global South, his research is informed and inspired by third world feminist thought and everyday dalit, queer and feminist struggles and modes of resilience in India. This thoroughly reflects in his teaching, research, collaborations, and community organizing. He has recently co-authored a book on Social Geographies alongside Kath Browne, Niharika Banerjea, and Mary Gilmartin and is currently working on his first monograph on caste, queerness and city-making in India.

Gender and Society (Core)

Foundations of Social Sciences II (Core)

Sex in/and the City: Queer Practices and (Im)possible Geographies (Elective)

Decolonizing Sexualities (Elective)

Taking Space Seriously: Sexual Justice and Right to the City (Elective)

Selma Jeanne Cohen Conference presentation Award, American Society for Theatre Research, 2018

Knowledge Mobilization Award, Urban Studies Foundation, UK, 2024

A Manifesto for Pandemic Sexual and Gendered Citizenships: Practicing Urgent Witnessing, Leicester Institute of Advanced Studies Pandemic Programme Amplification Award, 2021 (January- July), £29,735 [PI: Gavin Brown]

The Epistemologies of ‘Lockdown’: The Spatialization of Sexual and Gender Politics in a Time of Pandemic, Leicester Institute of Advanced Studies, 2020 (May-July) £3996 [PI: Gavin Brown]

CHASE (Consortium for Humanities and Arts South East England) Feminist Network small grant to conduct a methodology workshop titled Mapping Queer Geographies: A One Day Inter Disciplinary Workshop exploring Embodied Queer Research Methods at Brighton, 2019

Global Fellow (Education), School of International Relations, University of St Andrews, United Kingdom, 2024-25

Urban Studies Foundation International Fellowship, United Kingdom, 2023

Visiting Researcher, Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom, 2023

Honorary Visiting Fellow, School of Geography, Geology and Environment, University of Leicester, United Kingdom, 2020-23

Early Career Visiting Fellowship, Leicester Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Leicester, United Kingdom, 2019

Fellow, Community Empowerment Program, Internet Freedom Festival, Spain, 2019-20

Diversity and Inclusion Fellow, Internet Freedom Festival [IFF-2019], Spain, 2019

Browne, K., Dhiren Borisa, Niharika Banerjea and Mary Gilmartin (2024). Social Geographies: The Basics, London: Routledge.

Borisa, Dhiren and Gavin Brown (2024). Intimate borders of South Asian queer diasporas in the UK, in Zalfa Feghali and Deborah Toner (eds), The Routledge Companion to Gender and Borderlands, London: Routledge.

Borisa, Dhiren and Akhil Katyal (2024). Caste under the Quilt. Queerbeat. https://www.queerbeat.org/stories/caste-under-the-quilt.

Ashby, D., Banerjea, N., Baker, P., Borisa, D., Browne, K., di Feliciantonio, C., Feghali, Z., Kerrigan, D., McAuliffe, M., Neary, A., & Brown, G. (2022). The epistemologies of ‘lockdown’: Closets, vulnerability, and Citizenship. LIAS Working Paper Series, 7. https://doi.org/10.29311/lwps.202274078

Ashby, D., Banerjea, N., Baker, P., Borisa, D., Browne, K., di Feliciantonio, C., Feghali, Z., Kerrigan, D., McAuliffe, M., Neary, A., & Brown, G. (2022). Sexual and intimate citizenship in a time of pandemic. LIAS Working Paper Series, 7. https://doi.org/10.29311/lwps.202274079

Borisa, Dhiren and Gavin Brown (2022). ‘Contagion, Containment, Communalism: Contested Citizenships in the Times of COVID’, in Niharika Banerjea, Paul Boyce and Rohit K Dasgupta (eds), South Asian Assemblages and Ethnographies in a Pandemic, London: Routledge

Brown, Gavin and Dhiren Borisa (2021), ‘Making Space for Queer Desire in Global Urbanism’, in Michele Lancione and Colin McFarlane (eds), Global Urbanism,: Knowledge , Power and the City, London: Routledge.

Borisa, Dhiren (2020). ‘Hopeful rantings of a Dalit Queer Person’, Jindal Law and Humanities Review, Vol. 1, Issue 1. p 91

Borisa Dhiren and Parmesh Shahani (2020). ‘The Future Queer Histories That Must Be Written’, in Parmesh Shahani’s Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)longing in Contemporary India, Special anniversary edition, New Delhi: Sage

Borisa, Dhiren (2020), ‘City and Sexuality: An Auto-ethnographic Storytelling of Geographies of Caste, Class and Queerness in Delhi’, Geography and You, 20 (4-5): 82-87.

Borisa, Dhiren and Dhrubo Jyoti (December 2016), ‘Queering Dalit in India’, The Investigator: An International Refereed Journal of Multidisciplinary Explorations, Vol. 2. No. 4. ISSN 2454-3314
Email dborisa@jgu.edu.in
ORCID ID 0000-0002-2138-2269
Key Expertise Geographies of Sexualities, Urban Studies, Queer City-making, Critical Caste Studies, Dalit Studies, gender and sexuality studies, queer studies, Politics of Knowledge Production, Queer and Feminist Ethnographic and Collaborative Research, Digital Humanities and Cartography
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