Mohan Dutta

Based on his work on healthcare among indigenous communities, sex workers, migrant workers, farmers, and communities living in extreme poverty, Prof. Dutta has developed an approach called the culture-centered approach that outlines culturally-based participatory strategies of radical democracy for addressing unequal healthpolicies. Based on academic-activist collaborations, the culture-centered approach uses fieldwork, resistive strategies for performance and dialogue-based reflexive participation to create entry points for listening to the voices of communities at the global margins. At the core of his research agenda is the activist emphasis on provincializing Eurocentric knowledge structures, and de-centering hegemonic knowledge constructions through subaltern participation. He has received over $4 million in funding to work on culture-centered projects of health communication, social change, and health advocacy. Recently, he completed a $1.5 million grant funded by the Agency for HealthCare Research & Quality (AHRQ) to develop a culturally-centered health communication project on heart disease among African American communities in the Lake and Marion counties of Indiana. This community-grounded project interrogating the unhealthy structures that constrain the health and wellbeing of African American neighborhoods in the US became the basis for multiple organic projects rooted in the aspirations in the community for health and wellbeing. At NUS, he received over $2 million in funding to run culture-centered projects of health across Asia, including projects on food insecurity in West Bengal, poverty and health in Singapore, health among migrant workers in low skilled sectors, health of transgender sexworkers, health among Malays, and cardiovascular health and marginalization. At Massey, he looks forward to building the work of CARE in the areas of indigenous health, health and migration, and poverty.

The social impact in Mohan Dutta's work bridges activist interventions and academic knowledge production, delineating the tensions, divergences and convergences when academics, activists, and communities come together in co-creating transformative practices. He is interested in theorizing the nature of productive practices of academic performance situated at the intersections of subaltern politics, activist commitments, and academic research. Professor Dutta explores these tensions in academic-activist-community collaborations through his own experiments with collaboration and solidarity.

In addition to teaching, writing and conducting fieldwork in collaboration with activist groups, Prof. Dutta enjoys spending leisure time with his wife, children Shloke, Trisha, Soham, nieces and nephews, parents and siblings, and an extended family of performers and activists; stimulating conversations with his advisees, usually over meals; organizing opportunities in radical democracy with grassroots groups; and participating in creative production, script writing, and direction for 360 degree campaigns. In his most recent performance work, he has served as the visiting artistic director for Rittwick, a grassroots group in West Bengal, India working on performance for social change. He has also directed the "Singaporeans Left Behind" "Voices of Hunger" and "Respect our Rights" campaigns and documentary films. Prof. Dutta is the winner of the 2016 International Communication Association (ICA) Applied/Public Policy Communication Research Award, and the 2018 Outstanding Health Communication Scholar Award. He serves on the Advisory Panel of the World Health Organization (WHO) Cultural Contexts of Health (CCH) group.

Education

• PhD University of Minnesota (1998 — 2001)
• Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech.) iit (1991 — 1995)
• Purdue University

Companies

• Director Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (2018)
• Dean’s Chair Professor of Communication Massey University (2018)
• Director Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation, NUS (2012 — 2018)
• Provost's Chair Professor National University of Singapore (2014 — 2018)
• Head of the Department National University of Singapore (2012 — 2018)
• Director Center on Poverty and Health Inequities (2011 — 2012)
• Professor of Communication Purdue University (2001 — 2012)
• Associate Dean of Research & Graduate Education Purdue University (2010 — 2012)
• Visting Professor National University of Singapore (2010 — 2010)

Skills

• Grant Writing
• E-Learning
• Editing

Other

Public Relations, Leadership, Strategic Communications, Data Analysis, SPSS, Social Media, Statistics, University Teaching, Public Speaking, Teaching, Higher Education, Qualitative Research, Research