Team

Dr. Dheepa Sundaram (she/her) studies hate politics, social media, and digital publics in South Asian contexts. Dr. Sundaram has presented and 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 to Religion News Service on Hindu perspectives, a founding member of the US-based South Asia Scholar Activist Collective (SASAC), and a trainer for Sacred Writes (public scholarship training program for religion scholars).

Cindy Tekobbe is an assistant professor in critical feminist science and technology at the University of Illinois Chicago. She researches and writes about digital literacies, identities, pedagogies, methodologies, cultures, and activism. Weaving together traditional stories and contemporary case studies, Tekobbe’s 2024 monograph, Indigenous Voices in Digital Spaces, published by Utah State University Press, represents the culmination of five years of research in online indigeneity, focusing on the work of activists and artists on social platforms. Tekobbe’s work on gendered online harassment, cryptocurrencies, social media, post-truth, and white supremacy has appeared in academic and general interest venues such as Information Communication and Society, Newsweek, enculturation, and Present Tense. Tekobbe is an Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy Fellow and an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.