Jyoti Puri, Simmons University Sponsors: Charles Phelps Taft Research Center and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Jyoti Puri is Hazel Dick Leonard Chair and Professor of Sociology at Simmons University. She writes and teaches at the crossroads of sociology, sexuality and queer studies, and postcolonial feminist theory. Her most abiding interests relate to issues of sexuality, gender, race, nation, and state from a transnational/postcolonial feminist lens.