Devika Chawla

Devika Chawla is the Stocker Professor of Interpersonal Communication at the School of Communication Studies, part of Ohio University's Scripps College of Communication. Her research focuses on communicative, performative, and narrative approaches to family, home, and social identity, with a particular emphasis on urban north India and cross-generational refugee identity. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from Purdue University, with minors in Family Studies and Social Anthropology. Her work includes a seminal book Uprooted: Oral Histories of India’s Partition, which won a major award, and over 50 peer-reviewed publications.

Education:

• Bachelor’s (Honors) in English Literature and Literary Criticism, University of Delhi
• M.A. in English Print Journalism, Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi
• M.A. in Speech Communication and Dramatic Arts, Central Michigan University
• Ph.D. in Communication Studies, Purdue University

Research Interests: Dr. Chawla explores how social, political, and economic resources shape identities within family and marital relationships. Her work spans Hindu arranged marriages, post-Partition refugee narratives, and the role of objects and affect in migration stories. She employs life history and oral history methodologies to trace intergenerational memory.

Awards:

• 2015 Outstanding Book Award (National Communication Association)

Editorial Roles: Senior Editor for South/Southeast Asia at the Oxford University Press Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Communication; Editor-in-Chief of Departures in Critical Qualitative Research (UC Press).

Current projects include a family memoir examining material culture and migration.