Associate Professor
Appalachian State University
Sunny Sinha is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work and an Affiliate Faculty in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies at Appalachian State University. She is the author of the book, Risks, Stigma, Agency:(link is external) Life Histories of Women Involved in Sex Work in Kolkata, India(link is external), recently published in March 2025 by Palgrave MacMillan.
She has considerable social work practice and research experience working with diverse groups of sex workers and the various NGOs reaching out to the sex worker community in Kolkata, India. For nearly two decades (2005-2024), Dr. Sinha has conducted research among women residing in brothels, women indirectly employed in sex work via informal jobs, transgender sex workers, and clients of sex workers. She is also a Fahs-beck Scholar and a recipient of the 2018 Michael H. Agar Lively Science Award- an award given annually by the Qualitative Health Research journal to the most innovative applied research article.Furthermore, Dr. Sinha serves as a Consulting Editor of Affilia: A Feminist Inquiry in Social Work, member of the CSWE’s Council on the Role and Status of Women (CORSW), editorial board member of Palgrave Advances in Sex Work Series.
Disclosure information not submitted.