Dheepa Sundaram, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Denver

Dr. Dheepa Sundaram (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Denver, which sits on the unceded tribal lands of the Cheyenne and Arapaho nations.

Her scholarship examines social media hate politics, religious nationalism, and the formation of Hindu religious publics through online platforms and emerging technologies. She has written about how caste- and race-oppressed, Indigenous, and minority religious communities are characterized, minimized, and effaced in digital spaces. Her current monograph project, Globalizing Dharma: The Making of a Global Hindu Brand, examines how commercial ritual websites fashion a new, digital canon for Hindu religious praxis, effectively branding religious identities and imposing caste-privileged religious norms as a default Hinduism that largely conforms to the Hindu nationalist agenda.  She is also a contributor for Religion News Service on Hindu perspectives and a founding member of the South Asia Scholar Activist Collective (SASAC) and coauthor of the Hindutva Harassment Field Manual.

Research Area: Racial Justice and White Supremacy

Works By Dheepa Sundaram, Ph.D.

Drs. Danielle Boaz, Michael R. Fisher Jr., Allyson Shortle, and Dheepa Sundaram are 2023-2024 PRRI Public Fellows studying the intersection of politics, religion, and racial justice. This Spotlight Analysis details the findings of their original,

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