Qualifications

• Bachelor of Technology (Honours) - Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (1995)
• Master of Arts - North Dakota State University (2001)
• Doctor of Philosophy - University of Minnesota (2001)

Research Interests

Research on the culture-centered approach (CCA) to health communication explores the ways in which cultural meanings are co-constructed by participants in their interactions with the structures that surround their lives. It is through these co-constructions that subaltern participants discuss possibilities of resisting a healthcare system that continues to locate them at the peripheries of the mainstream, and co-create narratives of social change that transform the silences carried out by mainstream structures of knowledge production. Agency and context are two key threads that have flown through the research conducted in this area, utilizing combinations of ethnography, survey-based methodology and performance to engage with the symbolic and material spaces of social change across the globe. Scholarship focusing on the culture-centered approach has been published in Communication Theory, Health Communication, Human Communication Research, Health Education and Behavior, and Qualitative Health Research, in addition to being published as chapters in several books. The key concepts of the culture-centered approach are highlighted in the book “Communicating health: A culture-centered approach” published by Polity Press.

Formulated under the framework of the culture-centered approach, Professor Dutta’s research program explores the interactions among structure, culture and agency in the co-creation of transformative practices for challenging marginalizing communication practices in healthcare settings. The goals of this program of research are to understand (a) the location of communication within the complex interplay of structure and culture, (b) the ways in which individual and collective agencies are enacted within and in resistance to structural constraints, and (c) the interactions of human agency and communicative processes in bringing about social change and structural transformation. These research interests suggest theoretical insights regarding the ways in which communication structures, practices, and messages participate in the marginalization of certain sectors of the population, and draw attention to the processes through which these silencing structures are resisted by those that are typically disenfranchised. Ultimately, these theoretical entry points provide pragmatic guidelines for engaging with problems of marginalization and disenfranchisement, fostering spaces for listening to those voices that have historically been rendered silent by the institutional practices of policymakers, interventionists, and program evaluators. The emphasis is on co-creating theoretically grounded spaces of change by working dialogically with subaltern communities through participatory communication strategies.

Professor Dutta has published the book Communicating social change: Structure, culture, agency” in collaboration with Taylor & Francis, and more recently "Voices of Resistance" published by Purdue University Press. He was awarded the Lewis Donohew Outstanding Health Communication Scholar Award in recognition of this work. Also at Purdue, he was awarded the prestigious University Scholar Award for his research excellence. His most recent research involves a $1.5 million project funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality (AHRQ) to develop culturally-centered guides on heart disease for African Americans in the Lake & Marion counties of Indiana, and a $1.9 million Center on the Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) (www.care-cca.com) funded by the National University of Singapore. Writing availaible on the following blog: http://culture-centered.blogspot.com.

Thematics

21st Century Citizenship, Design – for Commerce, Community and Culture, Health and Well-being, Future Food Systems

Area of Expertise

Field of research codes
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultural Studies (200201): Communication and Media Studies (200100): Communication Studies (200101): Cultural Studies (200200): Cultural Theory (200204):
Health Promotion (111712):
International and Development Communication (200103): Languages, Communication And Culture (200000):
Maori Health (111713): Medical And Health Sciences (110000):
Postcolonial Studies (200211):
Public Health and Health Services (111700)

Completed Projects

Languages

• Bengali
  Last used: Currently
  Spoken ability: Excellent
  Written ability: Excellent
• Hindi
  Last used: Currently
  Spoken ability: Average
  Written ability: Average

Teaching Statement

An award winning teacher at the graduate and undergraduate levels, Professor Dutta firmly believes that excellent teaching goes hand-in-hand with excellent research. His teaching is founded on the principles of dialogue, commitment, and intellectual growth. Philosophically, he notes that teachers are guides who catalyze our growth as human beings, and therefore grounds his pedagogy in an emphasis on growth, awareness, and self-reflection. Drawing upon the writings of Gayatri Spivak, he emphasizes the vital role of education is interrogating our privileges that both limit the possibilities that we can co-create with others and simultaneously open up new possibilities of transformations.

Professor Dutta’s modules embody the integration of theory and practice in the context of contemporary global problems. The emphasis on Critical, Postcolonial and Subaltern Studies theories is weaved through the courses taught by Dutta, situated amidst the articulation of entry points for structural transformations.

Therefore, there is a continuous interrelationship between theory and practice, with the goal of building higher order theory that is instructive in the co-creation of participatory spaces for listening to subaltern voices and for de-centering the West-centric hegemony of communication knowledge. There is a strong element of deconstruction that is built into Professor Dutta’s courses, coupled with an emphasis on reflexive and ethnographic methodologies for carving out spaces of solidarity with subaltern communities. The theoretical engagement with critical theory and the Subaltern Studies project creates an entry point for advocacy, politics of social change, and culture-centered praxis.

It is with this emphasis on advocacy and politics of change that Professor Dutta occasionally teaches service learning courses that engage undergraduate and graduate students in addressing the structures of inequity under neoliberalism.  Such courses result in projects of academic-community solidarity in addressing key policy and program issues faced by disenfranchised communities.

Current Doctoral Supervision

Main Supervisor of:

• Shucen Yi - Doctor of Philosophy
  Exploring digital health among empty nest elderly in China - A Culture-Centered Approach
• Samiksha Pattanaik - Doctor of Philosophy
  A culture-centered exploration of India’s Community Health Workers’ meanings of the Covid-19 pandemic and the role of mobile technology in response st
• Mahbub Rahman - Doctor of Philosophy
  Construction of health among the Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh: A Culture-Centred Approach
• Pooja Jayan - Doctor of Philosophy
  Exploring meanings of health and wellbeing among migrant Indian nurses in New Zealand using a Culture-Centered Approach

Completed Doctoral Supervision

Main Supervisor of:

• 2024 - Andrea Zorn - Doctor of Philosophy
  Entrepreneurship and its Meanings for Low-Income Women in Aotearoa: A Culture-Centred Approach
• 2023 - Christine Elers - Doctor of Philosophy
  Theorising Maori meanings of health and wellbeing in a whakapapa paradigm: Voices from the margins

Co-supervisor of:

• 2021 - Flora Galy-Badenas - Doctor of Philosophy
  Gender and ethnicity in politics: An intersectional approach to French and New Zealand media coverage

Other Links

• Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation - This is the homepage of CARE, the Center I direct at Massey.
• Opinion Piece - This is a collaborative opinion piece with the activist-in-residence Murdoch Stephens on the Christchurch attack and calls for free speech.
• Culture-centered Blog - This is the link to my public writings on the Culture-centered blog on whiteness, colonialism, and culture-centered processes of empowerment.
• Interventions from the Global South podcast - This is the link to the "Interventions from the Global South" podcast I host for the International Communication Association (ICA).
• Civil Society Solidarity: Hindus for Human Rights - This is the solidarity statement in support of me and CARE for our work on Hindutva extremism offered by Hindus for Human Rights.
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• Keynote Speech at The International Conference on Language and Social Psychology (ICLASP) 2022 - Titled "Cultural centering as decolonizing hegemonic structures," the talk explores the organizing role of radical democracies in the grassroots as the basis of structural transformation.
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