Dr. Akanksha Misra

Akanksha Misra received her Ph.D. in Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies from the University of Washington in 2020. She has an M.A. in Cultural Studies from Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey and a bachelor’s of engineering degree from Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, Aurangabad, India. Her master’s thesis examined workings of feminist organizations in Turkey and India working with adult survivors of incest and child sexual abuse. Her doctoral dissertation research explored the creation of gendered and sexual citizenship through bodies of teachers and children in schools in India and Turkey. 

Dr. Misra’s current research involves two projects. One looks at menstrual issues, especially a particularly common but peculiar ‘disorder’ called Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. With her zeal to situate menstrual justice as a social justice issue, Dr. Misra focuses on PCOS in the largely rural and local north community, looking at the intersections of gender, race, class, disability, and childhood experiences through which PCOS bodies emerge and ‘become’. Her other ‘pet’ project in collaboration with Dr. Mairi McDermott at the University of Calgary, Canada and other amazing transnational mother-scholars, situates the mothering body in the center of academic practices and aims to reimagine the academy through motherhood. 

Aside from teaching and research, Dr. Misra has always considered public scholarship and activism as the beating heart of her intellectual journey and formation. Active with feminist and other social justice organizations across Turkey, India and the USA, Dr. Misra has also extensively written for feminisminindia. Her time in Plattsburgh has also seen many service and community-oriented projects, where she has represented the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies and helped elevate voices of minoritized people, women, and caregivers on and beyond the SUNY Plattsburgh campus.

Dr. Misra teaches Introduction to Gender and Women’s Studies, Global Gender Issues, Gender in Education, and Feminist Theory. A native of India, a globetrotter, and a cosmopolitan citizen, Dr. Misra calls Turkey her adopted home. She currently lives in Plattsburgh with her husband and three children and in her spare time cooks, reads, cleans, hikes, does yoga, despairs about the state of the world, and dances…to the tune of her own beat!