Bunsha was born and raised in Mumbai, India. She completed a bachelor's degree in economics and commerce at the University of Mumbai, and a diploma in social communications media at the Sophia Polytechnic, Mumbai, in 1995. She has a master's degree in development studies from the London School of Economics (2000), and in 2008 Bunsha was awarded a prestigious John S. Knight Fellowship for journalism at Stanford University, USA. In mid-2009 she enrolled as a PhD student in environmental studies at Simon Fraser University in Canada, but graduated with a master's in resource and environment management in 2012. By 2010 she had moved into research on indigenous community conservation and cultural heritage, and lectured at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. From 2015 to 2021 she led the Lower Fraser Aboriginal Knowledge project, responding to oil spills and climate change,https://www.linkedin.com/in/dionnebunsha/details/experience/ before joining the University of British Columbia.
