Kanav Narayan Sahgal

Education

• BCom (Hons), St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata
• MA in Development, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru

Profile

Kanav (pronouns: he/him) is currently the Programme and Communications Manager in the Access to Justice Vertical of Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy (Nyaaya), where he co-manages the functioning of two large-scale, multi-crore, multi-state legal aid fellowship programmes. He is also a contributor at Global Voices, an international citizen journalism platform committed to advancing digital rights, combating misinformation and disinformation, and promoting indigenous languages. Kanav is an avid writer and columnist. His monthly gender column can be found in the Sunday edition of The Deccan Herald, which in 2023, was awarded the Likho Award for Media Excellence by the Humsafar Trust. Kanav is also deeply embedded in the queer movement. He held a leadership role in a Delhi-based queer collective for four years (between 2017 to 2021), when he ideated and executed one of North India’s largest queer film festivals — the Delhi International Queer Theater and Film Festival.

More recently, he was involved in providing inputs to the high-powered Supriyo Committee, formed by the Central Government and headed by the Cabinet Secretary, in the aftermath of the Supreme Court of India’s 2023 judgment in the marriage equality case (Supriyo @ Supriya Chakraborty & Anr. v Union of India).

Additionally, Kanav engaged with the Indian National Congress Manifesto Committee by working closely with the LGBTQIA+ Vertical of the All India Professionals’ Congress to inform and shape policy proposals for the party’s the 2025 Delhi election manifesto. However, Kanav is not professionally affiliated with any political party.

In addition to being widely published in the popular media, Kanav has also been quoted more than a dozen times by journalists around the world in platforms such as TIME, DW News, Washington Blade, The New Indian Express, among others. In his spare time he enjoys reading, writing, and traveling.

Research Interest

• Queer Theory,
• Sociology of Gender and Sexuality,
• Sociology of Law,
• Feminist-Queer Legal Theories,
• Reproductive Rights and Justice,
• Qualitative Methods,
• Decolonial Queer Perspectives and Theories,
• Transnational Feminisms,
• Transnational Queer Politics and Mobilizations;
• Work: Access to Justice,
• Human Rights Advocacy,
• Freelance Journalism,
• Not-for-Profit Management (Programmes, Communications, Donor and Financial Management, Data Analytics)

Publications

For a list of Kanav’s publications, click here.