Rajorshi Das is a PhD candidate in English with a certificate in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies (GWSS). They study contemporary liberal queer narratives emerging out of India across print and digital platforms. As a commitment towards public engagement and scholarship, they interview activists and artists for their podcast, Queerness and Storytelling in India. Rajorshi’s dissertation will rely decolonial methodologies and archival research to unpack the messiness of queer storytelling in India, and its impact on neighboring countries like Bangladesh.

As an educator-activist-poet, Rajorshi relies on critical race theory, disability justice and anti-caste frameworks to recognize knowledge as a site of power that needs to be simultaneously shared with and co-constituted by groups and individuals who have different kinds of capital. Rajorshi has been a teaching assistant in three departments – English, Rhetoric and Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies (GWSS). In Spring 2022, they were nominated for Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award by GWSS.

Currently, Rajorshi is using the post-comprehensive graduate fellowship to complete the fieldwork for their dissertation. This fieldwork has been supported in the past by Stephen Lynn Smith Memorial Scholarship for Social Justice, Stanley Award for International Research, and Graduate College Summer Fellowship.

Prior to coming to the US, Rajorshi taught in Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi for over three years.

They continue to be actively involved in doing queer politics and imagining queerness beyond academia.