Sweta Baniya

Sweta Baniya is an assistant professor of rhetoric, professional and technical writing at Virginia Tech. She specializes on transnational disaster studies, risk/crisis communication, non-Western rhetorical traditions, and community engagement. 

Her research centers around the ever evolving and challenging global issue of natural and manmade disasters, such as earthquakes or climate change. In doing so, her research draws together non-Western and Western paradigms with the goal of demonstrating how such combinations produce not only new insights but also important public interventions. Her applied research draws these non-Western paradigms into dialogue with contemporary rhetorical framings of natural and manmade disasters for the purpose of supporting local and global communities faced with responding to such events.

Her works have appeared on Encultration, Journal of Business & Technical Communication, Journal of Technological Studies. She is also founding member of nextGEN, an international graduate student listserv.