Mohan J Dutta is Professor of Communication at Purdue University, where he teaches and conducts research in international health communication, critical cultural theory, poverty in healthcare, and public policy and social change. Currently, he serves as senior editor of the journal Health Communication, newsletter editor of the International Communication Association. He is the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Communication, a service learning fellow and a fellow of the Entrepreneurial Leadership Academy at Purdue University where he has been developing a project on communication leadership in social entrepreneurship.

Professor Dutta began his career at Purdue University in 2001 after completing his PhD in Mass Communication from the University of Minnesota. His research examines marginalization in contemporary healthcare, health care inequalities, the intersections of poverty and health experiences at the margins, the mobilization of cultural tropes for the justification of neo-colonial health development projects, the meanings of health in the realms of marginalized experiences in highly underserved communities in the global South, and the ways in which participatory processes and strategies are organized in marginalized contexts to bring about changes in neo-colonial structures of global oppression and exploitation. Based on his work on healthcare among indigenous communities, sex workers, migrant workers, rural communities and communities living in extreme poverty, he has developed an approach called the culture-centered approach that outlines culturally-based participatory strategies for addressing unequal healthcare policies and global disparities. The culture-centered approach uses a combination of postcolonial deconstruction, resistive strategies for performance and dialogue-based reflexive participation to create entry points for listening to the voices of marginalized communities that have historically been stripped of agency in modernization discourse and constructed as recipients of messages of development.

He has authored the book "Communicating health: A culture-centered approach" published by Polity Press, and co-edited "Emerging perspectives in health communication: Meaning, culture, and power" published by Taylor and Francis, and "Communicating for social impact: Engaging communication theory, research, and pedagogy" published by Hampton Press, in addition to authoring approximately 90 or so articles and book chapters. For his scholarly productivity and contributions to health communication, Dr. Dutta was recognized as the Lewis Donohew Outstanding Scholar in Health Communication in 2006. In addition to teaching and writing, he enjoys spending leisure time with his wife and son, stimulating conversations with his advisees, organizing opportunities with grassroots groups, and dancing.