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Dheepa Sundaram

Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, University of Denver
Advisory Board

Dheepa Sundaram is an assistant professor of Hindu studies at the University of Denver, which sits on the unceded tribal lands of the Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples. She is a scholar of hate politics, ritual, nationalism, and digital culture in South Asian contexts. She has published on the formation of Hindu and Hindu nationalist virtual religious publics through online platforms and emerging technologies (e.g., social media, apps, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence). Her current monograph project, Globalizing Dharma: The Making of a Global Hindu Brand, examines how commercial ritual websites fashion a digital canon for Hindu religious praxis, effectively branding religious identities and marketing caste-privileged religious norms as a default, cosmopolitan Hinduism that anchors the Hindu nationalist political project. She is also a contributor for Religion News Service on Hindu perspectives, a founding member of the South Asia Scholar Activist Collective (SASAC), a trainer for Sacred Writes, and coauthor of the Hindutva Harassment Field Manual.

Featured Work: “’If You Like Hindutva . . . You Might Also Like . . .’: How Facebook’s Recommendation Model Reinforces Hindu Nationalism’s Casteism”; “Pandemic Pūjā: Corona Devi, Coronasur, and How a Viral Twitter Campaign Affirms Analog Ritual Power” in Religious Responses to Pandemics and Crises: Isolation, Survival, and #Covidchaos; “Hindutva 2.0: How a Conference on Hindu Nationalism Launches a Change in Strategy for North American Hindutva Organizations

Upcoming Projects: Globalizing Dharma: The Making of a Global Hindu Brand (monograph in progress)