The CCSP Director
Manisha Desai | Executive Director
Manisha Desai is the Empowerment Charitable Trust Endowed Professor of Global Citizenship, the Executive Director of the Center for Changing Systems of Power and a professor in the Department of Sociology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stony Brook University. Her research interests include transnational feminism, women’s human rights, gender and globalization, and contemporary Indian society. Methodologically, her work theorizes with marginalized communities in their pursuit of social justice and investigates power dynamics in knowledge production and advocates for co-produced knowledge to transform unequal social relations. Manisha employs a critical feminist lens that seeks to co-create knowledge and contribute to social justice even as it problematizes those efforts.
With colleagues at SBU she is collaborating in community and arts engaged climate justice research on Long Island and coordinating a funded grant on AI and the practice of democracy and academic freedom at SBU.
She is also a member of the Global Research and Action Network on the Eco-Social Contract coordinated by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development and the Green Economy Coalition and is a representative of the Sociologists for Women in Society at the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. She also serves on the Steering Committee of the Human Rights Cities Alliance and works as a member of the Every Woman global coalition, with partners in 165 countries, to end gender based violence.
Winner of multiple awards for her research and teaching, including the American Sociological Association’s 2025 Jesse Bernard Award for feminist contributions to sociology over a career.