Title: Professor
Degrees: B.A., M.A., University of Bombay; M.A., Ph.D., Annenberg School for Communication University of Southern California
Email: iroy@allegheny.edu
Phone: (814) 332-4384
Office Location: VCCA 310
Website: https://www.ishitasinharoy.com
Fall 2023 Office Hours: Monday & Wednesday 3:30-6:30pm or by appointment
Dr. Ishita Sinha Roy is a recipient of the Thoburn Award for Excellence in Teaching at Allegheny College. She is deeply invested in student-faculty collaborative research, and has supervised students almost every summer, supported by various internal and external grants. Her research on nation-branding and the politics of competing global media representations and discourses led to her recent book on India’s nation-branding efforts Manufacturing Indianness (Peter Lang, 2019. She is now working on a new manuscript on nationalism and surveillance.
From 2020-23, Prof. Sinha Roy co-facilitated Cohort IV of the Global Citizens Scholars (GCS) Program at the college. She supervised a small team of these GCS students in writing and publishing a children’s anti-domestic violence book which will be used in domestic violence workshops. Her pedagogical approach incorporates experiential learning and community engaged learning into courses, linking academic content with hands-on collaborations involving community partners and career professionals. Her research on global media and cultures intersects with her teaching, and she continues to take Allegheny undergraduates on credit-bearing, three-week long experiential learning (EL) Allegheny College study abroad seminars to emerging economies.
As the college’s Faculty Study Away Coordinator, and as the co-Principal Investigator on an Andrew W. Mellon global grant, Dr. Sinha Roy contributed professionally to internationalizing this campus. Having served as the Provost’s Faculty Liaison for the campus-wide Sustained Dialogues diversity initiative, she continues to advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion on this campus. From 2020-22, she was one of three Allegheny faculty ambassadors on the Great Lakes College Association’s BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) Faculty Leadership Council. She also represented the college at the Aspen Institute Business & Society undergraduate consortium program in summer 2021.
As a tenured full professor, Dr. Sinha Roy is an institutional mentor for tenure- track and full-time, non-tenure-track faculty at the college. She is on the college’s Steering Committee for the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and co-Chair of its Student Success Working Group. In this capacity, she is part of a select team that is working on preparing the official Report for the accreditation of the college by the Middle States Commission.
Apart from working with students on high-impact practices tied to local and global initiatives, Dr. Sinha Roy is faculty advisor for the Rotaract chapter at the college, the South Asian Students’ Association, and the Allegheny College Orchesis Dance Company. She is on the Board of the Crawford County Historical Society in Meadville, President-elect of the Meadville Rotary AM Club (District 7280), and teaches in the “Creating Landscapes” Enrichment Program for high school honors students and senior citizens.