Dr. Roopa is a social scientist in Critical Yoga Studies, a transnational American Studies project. She also teaches, researches, and writes on yoga, the body, racial constructions, and circulations of imperial power. 

 She grew up between India and the U.S., immersed in yoga practice. Later, as a yoga instructor and collective owner of a busy Brooklyn yoga studio, began to wonder: Is yoga more American than I am? Later on, she began researching how the commodification of yoga and how cultural appropriation in general results in racial harms.