Transnational Assemblages: Social Justice and Crisis Communication During Disaster

This book demonstrates how local knowledge and transcultural practices of recognizing, highlighting, and valuing marginalized perspectives during or after a crisis create an opportunity for tackling social injustices in post-disaster situations. With grounded case studies of the 2015 Nepal earthquake and 2017 Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, this book showcases how locals in marginalized and colonized spaces overcome disaster-created complexities via coalitional and transnational engagements.

Ultimately, this project illustrates how technical communicators can perform transdisciplinary research in disaster management to minimize the impacts of catastrophic disasters affecting the world’s most vulnerable populations.

Sweta Baniya, originally from Nepal, is an assistant professor of rhetoric and professional and technical writing and an affiliate faculty of Women and Gender Studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Through a transnational and non-Western perspective, her research focuses on transnational coalitions in disaster response, crisis communication, non-Western rhetoric, and transnational feminism. Her dissertation received the 2021 CCCC Outstanding Dissertation Award in Technical Communication-Honorable Mention. She is also the recipient of the CCCC Chairs’ Memorial Scholarship (2020), CCCC Scholars for the Dream Award (2019), CPTSC and Bedford/St. Martin’s Diversity Scholarship Award (2019), ATTW Amplification Award (2019), and Kairos Service Award for Graduate Students and Adjuncts (2019), among others. Dr. Baniya’s scholarship has appeared in Technical Communication Quarterly, Technical Communication, Enculturation, Journal of Business & Technical Communication, Community Literacy Journal, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Programmatic Perspective, and Journal of Technological Studies, among others. Dr. Baniya’s research and collaborative community work has been funded via Digital Justice Seed Grant by the American Council of Learned Societies, 4-VA Initiative, USAID, SIGDOC’s Career Advancement Grant, CCCC’s Research Initiative, among others. She teaches both graduate and undergraduate courses at Virginia Tech that focus on rhetorics in the global society, global community engagement, intercultural communication, user documentation, and disaster /crisis communication. Prior to pursuing her PhD, she worked as English News Reader and Editor at Nepal’s national radio, Radio Nepal, for eight years as well as worked as a journalist for the Nepal Bureau of Xinhua News Agency. Similarly, she also worked as Communications Officer for United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-Habitat) in Nepal, Teach for Nepal, and DanChurch Aid. Her research and teaching blends her multitude of professional experiences.