Research Activities

1. "The Counter-Conduct of Labor: How Indian Tech Workers Organize in India and the US" 

Dissertation completed at the University of Connecticut (2024)

Advisor: Professor Manisha Desai

Currently developing a book manuscript

2. “Walking a Fine Line: Being a Hindu American Woman against the Grain of Hindu Nationalism”

Co-PI, with Bandana Purkayastha and Anjana Narayan (2023-2024)

Funding agency: Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative (amount: $7,000)

Deliverables: Podcast series and publications. 

Research Assistant; PI: Bandana Purkayastha (Summer 2021, Summer 2023, Fall 2023)

Produced content analysis of news reports on migrant workers’ precarity during COVID. Interviewed high-skilled migrant workers in the US.

Funding agency: Social Science Research Council

Output: Two publications and two conference presentations with the PI.

Research Assistant; PI: Manisha Desai (Spring 2020, Summer 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021, Summer 2022)

Prepared literature review on gender, transnational feminism, colonial and postcolonial feminists in India, history of Dalit feminist activism in the nineteenth century.

Output: Two publications and one conference presentation with the PI.

• Roy, Rianka. “Praxis of Compliance: Feminist Solidarity for Women Tech Workers in India during Covid-19.” Under review. 
• Roy, Rianka. “Covert Carcerality: How Indian Tech Workers Experience Globalization.”  

• Roy, Rianka, Bandana Purkayastha, and Elizabeth Chacko. 2024. “‘We Cannot Go There, They Cannot Come Here’: Dispersed Care, Asian Indian Immigrant Families, and the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Social Sciences 13(5): 252. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13050252
• Purkayastha, Bandana, Rianka Roy, Anandhi S., and Deepa Ebenezer [equal authorship]. Forthcoming. “Gendered Inclusions and Exclusions: Lessons from Media Discourses during the Pandemic.” Journal of Social and Economic Development.
• Purkayastha, Bandana, and Rianka Roy. Forthcoming. “Water, Water, everywhere…But for Whom?” Contexts.
• Purkayastha, Bandana, and Rianka Roy. 2023. “Hidden in Plain Sight: ‘Neutral’ Enclosures for High-Skilled Immigrants during COVID-19.” Sociological Forum.
• Roy, Rianka. 2022. “Politics through Precarity: Tech Workers’ Unions in India during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Journal of Contemporary Asia. https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2022.2110925
• Roy, Rianka. 2022. “Immigrant Workers’ Movements in the US: Where are High-skilled ‘Nonimmigrants’?” Sociology Compass 16(6): e12985. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12985
• Desai, Manisha, and Rianka Roy. 2022. “Intersectional Coloniality: The Sociological Praxis of Savitribai Phule and the Women Activists of Satya Shodhak Samaj (Truth Seekers Society).’ The American Sociologist 53: 395-413. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-022-09536-1 
• Roy, Rianka. 2021. “Precarious Privilege: Globalism, Digital Biopolitics and Tech-Workers’ Movements in India.” The European Legacy 26(7-8): 675-691. https://doi.org/10.1080/10848770.2021.1962641
• Roy, Rianka. 2021. “Working from Home: Women in the Indian Tech-industry through the Pandemic.” Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics 44(1): 56-67. https://jcla.in/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/JCLA-44.1-Spring-2021_Rianka-Roy.pdf

• Roy, Rianka. 2024. “Humanitarian Organizations as Gendered Organizations.” Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality, edited by Silke Roth, Tobius Denskus and Bandana Purkayastha. Edward Elgar.
• Roy, Rianka. 2023. “Don’t Panic! Reach Us: Indian Tech Unions’ Social Media Narratives during the Pandemic.” In Media Narratives during the Pandemic, edited by Shubhda Arora and Keval Kumar. Routledge.  
• Roy, Rianka, Josef Ma, and Simon Cheng. 2023. “Digital Divide and Youth Development in the Early Twenty-first Century.” The Palgrave Handbook of Global Social Problems. 
• Rianka Roy, and Manisha Desai. 2022. “Krantijyoti Gyanjyoti Savitribai: The Light of Revolution and Knowledge.” Pp. 111-128 in Deconstructing the Margins: Neglected Social Theorists of Color, edited by Korey Tillman, David Dickens and C.C. Herbison. Lexington Books.
• Desai, Manisha, Rianka Roy, Asmita Asaavari, Ruth Hernandez-Rios, and Koyel Khan. 2022. “Writing on Self, Together: Collective Autoethnography as Praxis of Solidarity and Collective Care during the Pandemic.” Pp. 88-98 in Global Feminist Autoethnographies during COVID-19: Displacements and Disruptions, edited by Melanie Heath, Akosua K. Darkwah, Josephine Beoku-Betts, and Bandana Purkayastha. Routledge.  

Book Review

• Roy, Rianka. 2023. The Opportunity Trap: High-Skilled Workers, Indian Families, and the Failures of the Dependent Visa Regime by Pallavi Banerjee. Gender & Society 37(3): 472-474.
• Roy, Rianka. 2021. Planning in the 20thCentury and Beyond: India’s Planning Commission and the NITI Aayog by Santosh Mehrotra and Sylvie Guichard. Contemporary South Asia 29(1): 115-116. 

Conference Proceedings

• Roy, Rianka. 2021. “Post-Secular and Post-Democratic India: A Study of the Digital Dissolution of the State.” Pp. 593-604 in Aftershocks: Globalism and the Future of Democracy, edited by Ivan Lopez. Aragonese Association of Sociology and University of Zaragoza, Spain. 

Public Media

• Roy, Rianka. 2023. “Women’s Employment and Poverty.” CSW68 Women and Poverty Brief. US Women’s Caucus at the UN. https://www.uswomenscaucus.org/2023/09/12/csw-68-brief-womens-employment-and-poverty/
• Roy, Rianka. 2023. “Gender, Technology and Empowerment: Reflections on the 67th Commission on the Status of Women.” Labor Tech Research Network, June 22. https://medium.com/@labortechresearchnetwork/gender-technology-and-empowerment-reflections-on-the-67th-commission-on-the-status-of-women-68d2df4d50bf
• Roy, Rianka. 2022. “The Gender Digital Divide: Economic Access and Employment for Women.” CWS67 Gender and Technology Brief. US Women’s Caucus at the UN. https://www.uswomenscaucus.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Gender-Digital-Divide.pdf
• Roy, Rianka. 2021. “When Work Comes Home: Pandemic Realities for Indian Women in Tech.” Feminism in India, January 22. https://feminisminindia.com/2021/01/22/when-work-comes-home-pandemic-realities-indian-women-tech/

• Aug 2023 Panel: How to Conduct Research Internationally and Navigate the US Academy as an International Academic, SWS Summer Meeting, Philadelphia.
• Mar 2023 “Indian Women in Tech: Workplace, Communities and Unions.” Women’s and Gender Studies Lecture Series, International Women’s Day Panel: Gender and Technology: The Digital Divide and Women in Tech. Eastern Michigan University (virtual).
• Jan 2023 “Milestones in Graduate School.” Proseminar for the first-year graduate students in Sociology, University of Connecticut (Coordinator: Andrew Deener)
• Mar 2022 “Creating Bridges rather than Building Walls: Feminist Activism.” Mini conference organized by the Sociologists for Women in Society (East) at the Eastern Sociological Society Annual Meeting (virtual) 
• Feb 2022 “Tech Industry in India and Indian Tech Workers.” Undergraduate course on India Studies, Department of Sociology, University of Connecticut (Course coordinator: Manisha Desai)
• Oct 2021 “Doing Interdisciplinary Research: Opportunities and Challenges.” School of Liberal Arts and Culture Studies, Adamas University, Kolkata, India (virtual).
• Oct 2021 “Writing across Disciplines: Paradigms and Practices.” Department of English, Banaras Hindu University, Benares, India (virtual).
• Apr 2021 “Human Rights for Posthumans: Social Media, Surveillance and Privacy.” Department of Mass Communication, St. Xavier’s University, Kolkata, India (virtual). 
• Feb 2021 “Tech Industry in India: A Tale of Hope and Resistance.” Undergraduate course on India Studies, Department of Sociology, University of Connecticut (Course coordinator: Manisha Desai)
• Feb 2021 “Social Media Surveillance: Who is Watching us in the Digital Age?” Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Jagran Lakecity University, Bhopal, India (virtual). 

  Presenter

• Jan 2024 “Privilege as Evidence of Inequality: Queering the Methodologies of Studying High-Skilled and High-Wage Indian Tech Workers.” Roundtable at Sociologists for Women in Society, Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico.
• Jul 2023 “Unseen by All: The Invisibility of High-Skilled Temporary Indian Immigrants in the US during Covid.” Loreto College, Department of Geography, Kolkata. (Second presenter: Bandana Purkayastha)
• Jun 2023 “‘Online is Just a Backup’: Shortcomings of Virtual Protests for Tech Workers’ Unions in India.” International Sociological Association (RC 44), World Congress of Sociology, Melbourne.
• Jun 2023 “To Wear or Not to Wear: Hijab, Feminists, and Fundamentalists.” International Sociological Association, World Congress of Sociology, Melbourne. (First presenter: Manisha Desai)
• Feb 2023 “Seeking Change for Dignity: High-skilled Indian Immigrant Women’s Activism in the US.” Eastern Sociological Society, Baltimore.
• Jan 2023 “Expanding the Diversity Framework: High-Skilled Indian Women Immigrants Organizing in the US.” Roundtable at SWS Winter Meeting, New Orleans.
• Aug 2022 “Politics, Insularity and Comparative Precarity: Why Indian Tech Workers Tend to Avoid Unions” Paper Session at ASA Annual Meeting, Labor and Labor Movement Section, Los Angeles.
• Aug 2022 “Fighting Precarity with Politics: How Indian Tech Unions Mobilized during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Paper Session at Mini Conference, ASA Labor and Labor Movement Section, Los Angeles.
• Jun 2022 “The Local Turn in Transnational Movements: How Indian Tech Unions Organize.” Alternative Futures and Popular Protest, University of Manchester (Movements@Manchester) (virtual).
• May 2022 “Local Networks, Global Reflections: Solidarity in Indian Tech Unions.” Global South Graduate Student Conference. George Mason University (virtual)
• Mar 2022 “Retelling Precarity: Analyzing Indian and Asian Indian Migrant Worker Experiences during COVID-19 Pandemic across Space and Occupational structure.” Boston Migration Workshop, Boston University (Soma Chaudhuri [first presenter], Elizabeth Chacko, Deepa Ebenezer, Bandana Purkayastha, Rianka Roy, Paromita Sanyal, S. Anandhi and Jaita Talukdar) (virtual)
• Jan 2022 “Empowering Women the Neoliberal Way: Women’s Tech Groups in India.” Roundtable at Sociologists for Women in Society(virtual).
• Sep 2021 “Precarity, Marginality and Solidarity: Indian Women-in-Tech during the Pandemic.” Feminism(s) in the Age of Covid-19 and beyond. University of Luxembourg, Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences (virtual).
• Aug 2021 “Scholars Denied: The Theoretical Praxis of Savitribai Phule and the Women Activists of Satya Shodhak Samaj (Truth Seeker Society).” Scholar Activism and the History of Sociology: Celebrations, Critiques and Futures Past (sponsored by the ASA section on the History of Sociology and Social Thought) 
• (First presenter: Manisha Desai)
• Apr 2021 “Between Nations and Rights: Transnational Tech Workers in India through the Pandemic.” Session: Working for ‘America’: Transnational Workers during the Pandemic. Southern Sociological Society (virtual).
• Jan 2021 “Compliance, Resistance and Solidarity: Women-in-tech in India during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Roundtable at Sociologists for Women in Society (virtual).
• Aug 2020  “Social Distance and Digital Resistance: What Hyperdigitalization Brings to Indian Tech-Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Panel: South Asia Communication Association. Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Annual Conference (virtual).
• Jan 2020  “Women in Tech Jobs: Cultural Anxiety and Workplace Heteronormativity in India.” Roundtable at Sociologists for Women in Society. San Diego, U.S. 
• Jan 2020  “Colonial Crisis and Digital Dilemma: Encoding Bengali as a Second Language.” Panel: Digital Approaches to Second Language Writing, organized by Modern Language Association. Seattle, U.S. 
• Jan 2020  “Digital Biopolitics and Surveillance at Workplace: Indian Tech-workers’ Perspectives.” Panel: Being Human, Technology and New Media, organized by Modern Language Association. Seattle, U.S. 

Organizer & Presider

• Apr 2021 Paper session: “Working for ‘America’: Transnational Workers during the Pandemic.” Southern Sociological Society. (Virtual)
• Jan 2021 Paper session: “Persistence in the Digital World: Rights, Movements, Knowledge and Humanities.” Modern Language Association, 2021. (Virtual)
• (Session selected for inclusion in the ‘MLA Presidential Theme’ by Judith Butler.)

Discussant

• Aug 2021 Panel: “Women Empowerment and Gendered Communication in India.” South Asia Communication Association. Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. (Virtual)
• Jul 2021 Talk: “Pan-Africanism.” Department of Political Science, Surendranath College for Women, Kolkata, India (Virtual) 
• Aug 2020 Panel: “Enhancing Media in South Asia and its Diaspora.” South Asia Communication Association. Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. (Virtual)

*Research activities listed here are from 2019, when I joined the graduate program in Sociology at the University of Connecticut. To learn about my prior work, please email me at rianka.roy@gmail.com.