Devika Bordia graduated with a B.A. in Philosophy and a M.A. in Social Work. From 1999 to 2002 she worked with non-government organizations and conducted research on issues of self-governance, environment and violence against women in India.

Her scholarship brings together ethnography on politics, law, and governance, and histories of state-making and genealogies of people and place. In her dissertation, she examines how ideas and values underlying different forms of governance and justice circulate in everyday life, shape social relations, and contribute to the ethical self-fashioning of local leaders in the “tribal” regions of Western India.

Devika adopts an interdisciplinary approach to teaching, combining historical trends, theoretical insights, and comparative frameworks, which give meaning to different lived experiences. In her classes she aims to foster learning in a manner that encourages students to unpack assumptions about their own worldviews as they consider the lives of others and the nuances in value and meaning attached to ideas, actions, and experiences different from theirs. A focus on experiential learning involves bringing academic rigor to critically analyze current events, media reports, literature, textbooks, and aspects of popular culture, thereby uncovering assumptions of racial superiority, gender and class.

curriculum vitae