Lipika Mazumdar, a nearly 25-year assistant professor of anthropology at Pitt–Greensburg known for her dedication to bringing a wider, worldly perspective to students, died on July 12, 2026.
A memorial for Mazumdar will be held at 5 p.m. Oct. 8 at Campana Hall on the Pitt–Greensburg campus.
“She came from a different culture, from a different country,” noted her long-time colleague Pilar Herr, associate professor of history at Greensburg. “She wanted to impart her vast knowledge of her home country and so many other things. She just wanted to change students’ minds and students’ hearts. That’s who she really was.
“She really made a difference in a lot of people’s lives, even if she didn’t know it at the time,” Herr said. “I think her legacy is that she really cared about her students” as much as she cared about such issues as environmentalism, human rights and animal rights. “She was passionate about teaching students about these subjects and in encouraging students to go and explore the greater world. I guess in that sense she was a true anthropologist.
“She was literally like a big sister to me,” Herr added, and she was a very dedicated instructor in what was sometimes essentially a one-person department, teaching at least four and sometimes six classes a semester.
Mazumdar’s training as a cultural anthropologist informed her choice of courses. She taught at least 44 different courses while here — some repeatedly, others just once — ranging from perennial offerings (such as Introduction to Anthropology; Anthropology of Law; Reproductive Politics; Climate Change and the Human Challenge; plus Anthropology Capstone courses) to singular courses on Gender, Race and Class; Nationalism and the Postcolonial Experience: South Asia; Identities Beyond National Boundaries: Migration in Global Perspective; Transaction and Exchange in Non-western Cultures; and many more.
She directed students doing local fieldwork in anthropology, brought speakers to campus and took students to India for study abroad experiences across several years. On campus she also ran an informal student group called “News of the World” for student discussions on world news at lunchtime in the campus coffee shop, on her own initiative.
Herr traveled with Mazumdar, and the two were planning a trip to India in the near future. “She sometimes would come off to people as a bit gruff, rough on the edges, but that was an act. The reality was she had a huge heart. She went out of her way to take care of her students.”
Herr recalls Mazumdar meeting with one perpetually late student and asking “How can I help you?” It turned out that this student, an immigrant, lived in Pittsburgh and took a lengthy bus trip to and from Greensburg every day; when she was late, it was because her bus was late. Mazumdar offered to take the student back and forth to Greensburg every day that she herself commuted from her Pittsburgh home. “That was who she really was.”
Lipika Mazumdar was born in the state of Bengal, India. She earned simultaneous bachelor of arts degrees in anthropology and English from the University of Wyoming in 1984, then her master of arts degree in anthropology from the same institution in 1987.
That same year she joined Pitt as an anthropology teaching fellow, adding stints as an instructor in the College of General Studies for many individual semesters through 1994, when she began single or several-year periods as a visiting professor, fellow or visiting instructor in anthropology at Loyola University of Chicago, St. Lawrence University, Appalachian State University and Oberlin College.
She did her PhD in anthropology at Pitt in 1998, with a thesis on “Sacred Confluence: Worship, History, and the Politics of Change in a Himalayan Village” in India, In 2002, she joined Pitt–Greensburg as an assistant and a research associate professor.
Through the years, her research subjects have included the question of identity among Tibetan refugees in India; the Chinese, Indian, Korean, Japanese, Filipino, Vietnamese and Syrian-Lebanese communities in Allegheny County, as part of the Steel Industry Heritage Task Force; doctor-patient communication of healthcare options at UPMC; the impact of Hindu nationalism on the Himalayan village where she researched her dissertation; and local religious and educational environmental engagement and activism (including human-animal dynamics) in Leh, India.
She also lectured locally and throughout North America on many of her course and research topics, and served her campus and University on dozens of academic and faculty senate committees.
Another of her Greensburg colleagues, Gina Munir (assistant professor of biology and biological anthropology), first met Mazumdar through one of Mazumdar’s anthropology students, who was a friend of Munir’s. Munir then joined Pitt in 2021.
“Her heart and soul went into making the anthropology department what it was,” she said of Mazumdar. “She felt that everyone should know about anthropology. After all, anthropology is the study of humans.” How can you know humans without studying anthropology?
Munir saw Mazumdar teach several times: “She was very old school,” avoiding PowerPoint presentations, for instance. “‘Share your opinion, share your thoughts, let’s talk about this.’ She wanted to make sure you understood in depth about the material. The students that she mentored became very close. They would go to dinner at her house. When she found a student who was interested she really took them under her wing. She thought of her close students as her children, as her family.”
As a colleague, when Munir was a new faculty member, “she was always keeping us on our toes. She always wanted me to put cultural aspects into my teaching.” And, Munir added, “she always wanted me to be a well-rounded professor. She would help me work better.” The pair were even devising a new class together recently, to be called ‘Humans and Other Animals.’”
Mazumdar’s larger goal, said Munir, was “to make Pitt—Greensburg more interdisciplinary. “You need all aspects of knowledge – not just humanities, not just technology. To understand what it means to be fully human, you need to know everything. Not just one thing.
“She loved things so deeply and passionately,” Munir recalled. “I think some people took that as a little intimidating.” But it was a sign of her dedication, Munir said. Mazumdar may have been quite short, “but you remembered her because she had the biggest personality you would ever have met.”
Munir remembered one demonstration of her “sensitive and kind heart” during a visit to Munir’s family farm, when Mazumdar got to see baby peacocks that had hatched just hours earlier. She took one and “picked it up and held it to her chest. She just started cradling it like a little baby. It was very heartwarming, and that’s where I think you caught the most of her.
“She was such a brilliant woman and she cared so much not only about animal rights but about human rights,” Munir said — not only about stopping injustices but celebrating the best parts of humanity as well: “That everyone has the same rights in life, that everyone was well rounded and had a chance to be the best human.”
Greensburg communication faculty member Ann Czerwiński was an officemate and then office neighbor with Mazumdar. “You always knew where you stood with her,” Czerwiński wrote in a remembrance. “There were no pretenses; she was always genuinely Lipika. She cared deeply about the study of anthropology and she held the major together … She was committed to keeping the major of anthropology alive and well at Pitt, which was, as you can imagine, a great challenge for one person.
“She still has deep connections with a number of previous students she has taught over the years, and I have heard a couple of them recently sharing many fond memories of her. She genuinely enjoyed being out in nature, watching birds, and working on her various garden plots throughout her stunning nectar-filled yard. If you go to her house, you see aspects of Lipika everywhere you turn. From the milkweed she planted for monarch butterflies and the red bee balm for the many species of bees that visit her gardens, to the numerous birds fluttering around her many bird feeders, to all the beautiful decorations in her home, it is all uniquely Lipika.”
She is survived by her husband, Philip Bittenbender, sister Malabika “Mala” Mukherjee and brother Abhinav “Romi” Mazumdar.
— Marty Levine