Uma Maheswari Bhrugubanda has studied at the University of Hyderabad and Columbia University. She has Masters' degrees in English and Anthropology and a PhD in Socio-cultural Anthropology. Her recent publications include Vegetarians Only: Stories of Telugu Muslims (Orient Blackswan, 2016) which is a translation of stories by the Telugu writer Skybaaba. She edited this book along with Dr. A. Suneetha. She is also a co-author of the book, Towards a World of Equals: A Bilingual Textbook on Gender. (Hyderabad: Telugu Akademi, 2015)
Her academic articles and reviews have appeared in Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies, Critical Quarterly and Contributions to Indian Sociology. She has been teaching in EFL University, Hyderabad since 2006 and has taught courses on cultural theory, feminist and gender studies, religion and secularism.