معرفی
Ruma Sen is Professor of Communication in the School of Contemporary Arts at Ramapo College of New Jersey, where she has taught since 2002. She specializes in intercultural and global media studies, focusing on South Asian representation, Bollywood cinema, and postcolonial communication.
Education:
- Ph.D. in Communication Studies, Ohio University
- M.A. in Communication and Development Studies, Ohio University
- M.A. in Communication, University of Delaware
- B.A. in English, University of Calcutta
Research Interests:
Professor Sen’s scholarship interrogates how transnational media flows shape identities and cultural politics. Her work bridges intercultural communication, global media, and postcolonial theory, with particular attention to the soft-power role of Bollywood, gendered and religious representations, and the negotiation of race among South Asian diasporic communities. She employs ethnographic and critical textual methods to explore how audiences across global urban spaces consume and re-interpret Indian media.
Publication Trajectory:
Across two decades, her refereed articles and book chapters chart a shift from early examinations of postcolonial identity and whiteness toward contemporary analyses of celebrity transnationalism and mediated narratives of exclusion in India. The corpus reveals a consistent focus on transcultural reception, gendered mobility, and the politics of representation, with recent work addressing Priyanka Chopra’s global iconicity and Muslim marginalization narratives in Gujarat.
Awards & Honors:
- Henry Bischoff Award for Excellence in Teaching (2018)
- Multiple Faculty Student Research Awards (2020, 2017, 2014, 2011, 2009, 2008-2005)
- Sabbatical Research Grants (2017, 2009)
- Faculty Development Fund awards (2019, 2015)
- Schomburg Awards (2018, 2017, 2015, 2011, 2003)
Grants & Advising:
Professor Sen has secured successive internal grants that support student-faculty collaborative research, fieldwork in India, and conference travel. While specific funded projects are not detailed, her consistent receipt of Faculty Student Research Awards attests to active mentorship of undergraduate researchers.
Labs & Research Groups:
No formal lab affiliations are listed; her research is largely individual and ethnographic, often conducted in partnership with students during study-abroad and honors projects.
