[1] Misra earned her bachelor's degree in Religion from Centenary College of Louisiana in 1988, and her Ph.D. in Sociology from Emory University in 1994.
[2][3] Professor Misra joined the Department of Sociology at the University of Georgia in 1994, where she was affiliated with Women’s Studies.
[11] This work explores how race, gender, and class condition workers' experiences with managers, co-workers, and customers.
It also considers more deeply how race and gender shape the aesthetic labor that retail clothing workers must do.
Joya Misra’s numerous awards include the Eastern Sociological Society Public Sociology Award (2022),[12] the Roy J. Zuckerberg Endowed Leadership Chair (2022-2024),[13] the University of Massachusetts Samuel F. Conti Faculty Fellowship (2020–21),[14] and the University of Massachusetts Chancellor’s Leadership Fellow (2016–17).