Dr. Annapurna Devi Pandey teaches Cultural Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Dr. Pandey holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, and was a Post- doctoral fellow in Social Anthropology at Cambridge. Her research interests are South Asian women’s activism and leadership, the role of non- profit organizations vis-a vis state in women’s social and political activism, their economic and political empowerment in rural and tribal India; and women’s identity making in the Odia Diaspora in California. She is the author of numerous essays on Indian Women’s activism, agency and entrepreneurship in the context of globalization. Currently, she is working on women’s activism in mining region in India, issues of immigration and Indian Diaspora in the USA. She is an accomplished filmmaker of two important films, Homeland in the Heart and The Myth of Buddha’s Birthplace (with Prof. James Freeman). She was President of the Orissa Society of the Americas (2011- 2013), the oldest socio-cultural organization of diasporic Odias in North America.
I am a cultural Anthropologist and have been working on Women's activism and women's movements in the context of neo- liberal policies of the state working in close collaboration with the multi - national corporations. In the last few decades, I have ben also studying Indian diaspora specially women's spirituality in the context of modernization and globalization.
