In this week’s faculty seminar, NLSIU is hosting Ian Loader, Professor of Criminology and Professorial Fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford, on campus on January 14, 2026. He will deliver a lecture on the topic ‘Beyond motonormative punishment: On road safety as environmental regulation.’

Abstract

Criminology has long had a blind-spot concerning road safety. The field tends to accept that the problem is best left to technical specialists; treats road safety as somehow separate from its focal concerns with public safety; and reproduces an ideology of streets as distinct socio-juridical spaces. In so doing, criminology leaves unaddressed a significant dimension of one its core issues: how to create safe and liveable urban environments. In this paper, I set out one path via which to unsettle these distinctions. I begin with a brief historical and geographic sketch of the forms of harm and violence associated with car-dominant mobility systems. I then offer a critique of what I term motonormative punishment – a regime of legal sanctions and culture of blame that focuses on the individualised responsibility of a minority of ‘careless’ or ‘dangerous’ drivers while accommodating the structural violence generated by systems of automobility. I argue, instead, for theorizing road safety in terms of diffused responsibility between actors and hybrid actants in a system. It follows, I conclude, that we should radically decentre criminal punishment as a response to road violence in favour of forms of environmental regulation organised around five harm reduction principles: diversion, design, distributed agency, deliberative learning, and the disassembly of dangerous actants.

About the Speaker

Besides being faculty at the Oxford University, Prof. Ian Loader is also an Honorary Professorial Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society for the Arts.

He is the author of numerous books, edited collections, theoretical and empirical papers, and works of civic engagement on security, public and private policing; sensibilities towards dis/order and justice; penal policy and culture; crime control and political ideologies, and the democratic purposes of criminology. His current work coalesces around aspects of environmental harm.

Prof. Ian is presently in receipt of a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship (2025-2028) for a project entitled ‘Car harms: Automobility and the objects of criminology’. The project seeks to use the car, and systems of automobility, as a vehicle through which to explore what it means practice criminology in the midst of a climate breakdown. Ian is also teaching a graduate seminar on ‘Criminology and the car’.

The Centre for Health Law Policy and Ethics, NLSIU, is hosting a talk on ‘The Evolving Challenge of Antimicrobial Resistance and Opportunities for International Law to Address It’ by Steven J. Hoffman, Professor of Global Health, Law, and Political Science at York University, Canada, on January 15, 2026.

About the Talk

Antimicrobial resistance is associated with 1 million deaths in India each year and 4.95 million deaths worldwide – yet this global health challenge is only getting worse. In his talk, Professor Steven J. Hoffman from York University in Canada will unpack the root social causes driving the spread of drug-resistant infections and explore opportunities for using public international law to address the collective action problems that currently disincentivize governmental action.

About the Speaker

Steven J. Hoffman is a Professor of Global Health, Law, and Political Science, York University, Canada and a Founder / Investigator at Global Strategy Lab. His research has recently focussed on the international legal dimensions of antimicrobial resistance, for which he works closely with the World Health Organization as Co-Director of their WHO Collaborating Centre on Global Governance of Antimicrobial Resistance.

We are delighted to host Mr. A.S. Ponnanna, Senior Advocate, Member of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly, and Legal Advisor to the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Karnataka, at the NLS campus on Monday, January 12, 2026.

His talk, titled “Elections, the Rule of Law, and Democratic Governance,” will be held from 2 to 4 pm at NAB 101, and is being facilitated by Prof. Muhammad Ali Khan, who teaches the elective Introduction to Election Law at the University.

Abstract

Governance today is shaped by the growing convergence of law and public policy, with lawyers increasingly engaging as advisors, drafters, and institutional actors alongside policymakers. Drawing on his experience as a senior advocate, legislator, and legal advisor to the Chief Minister, Mr. Ponnanna will reflect on the expanding role of public policy professionals and the new professional pathways this creates for lawyers.

The lecture will also examine the evolution of Indian election law over the past decade, highlighting key judicial and regulatory developments and their impact on democratic governance. The talk will also address the emerging roles for lawyers and public policy minded professionals in election-related litigation, advisory work, policy formulation, and institutional reform.

The NLSIU Library Committee organised a panel discussion with Prof. (Dr.) Meera Nanda on January 13, 2026. The discussion focussed on Dr. Nanda’s recent work on the convergences between Hindu nationalism and postcolonial theory.

Panellists: Prof. (Dr.) Meera Nanda, Prof. (Dr.) Nigam Nuggehalli, Prof. (Dr.) V S Elizabeth, and Dr. Dayal Paleri

Moderator: Dr. Parashar Kulkarni

About The Panellists and Moderator

Prof. (Dr.) Meera Nanda is a historian of science and the author of several works critiquing the influence of Hindutva, postcolonialism and postmodernism on science, and the rising trends of pseudoscience and vedic science. Prof. Nanda taught History of Science at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Mohali from 2009 to 2017. Her best known books are Breaking the Spell of Dharma and Other Essays (2002), Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism in India (2004), The God Market (2010), and Science in Saffron: Skeptical Essays on History of Science (2016) and most recently A Field Guide to Post-Truth India (Three Essays Collective, 2024) and Postcolonial Theory and the Making of Hindu Nationalism: The Wages of Unreason (Routledge, 2025).

Prof. (Dr.) Nigam Nuggehalli is a Professor of Law at the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru. Prof. Nigam was appointed as Chair Professor, Department of Revenue Chair in September 2025. Prior to this appointment, he served as the Registrar of NLSIU since August 2021, where he was responsible for the administration of the University. He brings with him nearly three decades of academic and professional experience as a taxation law specialist. Before joining academia, he worked as a tax lawyer in New York and is a member of the New York Bar and the India Bar (Karnataka).

Prof. (Dr.) V. S. Elizabeth is a Professor of History at the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru. Prof. Elizabeth has taught core courses in history and elective courses on understanding sexual violence against women and state responses to it through feminist lenses, among others. Between December 2019 and June 2023, she served as the Vice-Chancellor of the Tamil Nadu National Law University, Tiruchirappalli. Prof. Elizabeth’s research interest in history is the socio-economic changes that took place in the early medieval kingdoms of South India. Since joining NLSIU however, she has researched and published on legal issues that have affected women, particularly on violence against women, both domestic and sexual violence.

Dr. Dayal Paleri is an Assistant Professor, Social Sciences at the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru. Dr. Paleri was previously a Commonwealth Split-site PhD fellow at the Department of Religious Studies, University of Edinburgh, UK, and a recipient of the Institute Research (IR) Award for Excellence in PhD Research by the Dean Academic Research at IIT Madras. His research interests include Indian Politics and Governance, Political Sociology of Religion and Nonreligion, Peace Studies, New Atheism, and State and Civil Society in Postcolonial Kerala.

Dr. Parashar Kulkarni is an Associate Professor, Centre for the Study of Social Inclusion (CSSI) at the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru. Dr. Kulkarni studies religion, political economy, and utopias in colonial and contemporary India and the British Empire. His work has appeared in literary and academic journals such as Granta, Boston Review, The Sociological Review Magazine, Labor History, Explorations in Economic History and Social Science History. Prior to joining NLSIU, he was Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Advanced and Legal Studies, University College London, and an Assistant Professor at Yale-NUS College, Singapore where he taught for nine years. He was also an Adjunct Instructor at the New York University.

Gallery

We are pleased to host Justice Zakeria Mohammed Yacoob, Retired Judge, Constitutional Court of South Africa, and Mrs. Anuradha Yacoob from January 5-11, 2026. He served as a Judge in the Constitutional Court from 1998-2013, earning distinction as one of the Court’s most principled voices on equality, human dignity and social justice. Justice Yacoob, who self identifies as blind since childhood, stands as a powerful testament to intellectual resilience and moral courage. He played a direct role in shaping South Africa’s constitutional future and was an active participant in the anti-apartheid struggle.

During his stay at NLS, he will be interacting with various members of the NLS community through the following events:

Schedule

January 6, 2026 | 11.10 am – 1 pm
OAB 101

Session with LLM Students (Open to the NLS community only)
Comparative Public Law and Governance
Instructor: NLS faculty Mr. Sidharth Chauhan.

Justice Yacoob will address the postgraduate students about his experiences on the Constitutional Court of South Africa, with a special emphasis on how they engaged with foreign legal materials in their reasoning and decision-making.

January 6, 2026 | 6 pm – 7.30 pm
Bangalore International Centre (BIC), Domlur

Public Meeting – An informal interaction between Justice Yacoob and city-based lawyers, researchers and students. Organised by the Centre for Law and Policy Research. (Open to the public)  

January 7, 2026 | 2-3.30 pm
Conference room, Training Centre (TC)

Interaction with NLSIU faculty members across law, social sciences and public policy clusters. (Open to NLS faculty only)  

January 8, 2026 | 9 am to 10.50 am
OAB 201, Krishnappa Hall

Session with 3rd year BA LLB (Hons) Students (Open to the NLS community only)
Human Rights Law and Practice Course
Instructors: NLS faculty Dr. Sanjay Jain, Dr. Siddharth Narrain and Mr. Arvind Narrain.

Abstract

Justice Yacoob delivered the landmark Government of South Africa v Grootboom decision, in which the Court laid down that policy on housing can be tested for its constitutionality based on whether it conformed to the requirement of having taken ‘reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realisation of this right.’

Based on this, the Court struck down the housing policy of the Cape Metropolitan Council on the ground that failed to make & ‘reasonable provision’ for those with ‘no access to land, no roof over their heads and who were living in intolerable conditions or crisis situations.’

What happened at the ground level post the delivery of the judgment? How can we evaluate the status of the right to housing in South African twenty-five years after Grootboom? How does the trajectory in South African with its constitutionally guaranteed right to housing compare with India where there is no such recognition? To facilitate a point of comparison, Dr. Sanjay Jain will discuss the judgment of Justice Murlidhar in Ajay Maken v Union of India (2019) to facilitate a comparison.

January 10, 2026

Off-campus visits and interactions with interested faculty, students and research staff.

For more information on these sessions, please write to  

 

The Green Room invites you to a play reading of The Coffin is Too Big for the Hole by Kuo Pao Kun (a short one-act play) on January 7, 2026. The session will take place from 5 –7 pm and take the form of a table read followed by a discussion.

Joining this discussion will be Ms. Mayura Baweja, an NLS alumna (BALLB ’95), theatre director (Fernando and His Grandmother) and actor (Queen Mother in Girish Karnad’s Bali: The Sacrifice).

About the Play

The Coffin is Too Big for the Hole is a sharp, darkly comic play that centres on a seemingly mundane problem: a coffin that does not fit the government’s standard-sized grave. As officials argue over procedure and responsibility, the play unfolds into a critique of institutional rigidity, indifference, and the erosion of human dignity beneath rules and paperwork.

The play features multiple characters, and we will be holding a table read during the session. We are looking for volunteers to read the roles—no prior experience required.  Those interested may reach out to the student coordinator, Aaditi [].

About the Playwright

Kuo Pao Kun (1939–2002) is widely regarded as the father of modern Singaporean theatre. Writing across languages and theatrical traditions, his work engages deeply with questions of identity, migration, memory, and the quiet violences of bureaucracy and modern life. His plays often blend the personal with the political, employing minimalism, symbolism, and irony to reflect on belonging and displacement in postcolonial societies.

We ended this term’s faculty seminars with a special lecture by Dr. Ewan Smith, Associate Professor of Public Law at UCL on the ‘Devolution after Empire.’

About the Article

This article questions the claim that the UK is a unitary state. It argues that the UK was, and perhaps is, an Empire. Empires are states in which questions of subsidiarity are inescapable and ongoing. Like unitary states, they have a supreme central government. Unlike unitary states, Empires are not governed as a single entity. The United Kingdom is not a state where all parts bear a singular relationship to the centre. Instead, it embraces a multiplicity of constitutional relationships, overlaid by sovereignty and the Crown. The nature of the UK territory was ambiguous under Empire. It still is, and the article explores how imperial structures continue to influence our devolution settlement. The British constitution ultimately managed to resolve very-large-scale questions of subsidiarity in a global Empire. It remains to be seen whether that same structure can resolve small-scale questions of subsidiarity in a supposedly unitary state.

About the Speaker

Dr. Ewan Smith joined UCL Laws as Associate Professor of Public Law in 2022. Prior to that he was a Fellow of Christ Church, Oxford, the Shaw Foundation Junior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, and an Early Career Fellow at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights. Ewan read law at Oxford, at the University of Paris and at Harvard Law School. In 2023 Ewan was a Hauser Fellow at New York University Law School and in 2024 he was a Visiting Professor at Faculty of Law of the University of Bologna. In 2026 he will be a visiting professor at the National University of Singapore. He has previously worked at Peking, Tsinghua and Renmin Universities in China and between 2005 and 2015 he worked for the UK Foreign Office. Ewan’s work considers how political rules govern powerful institutions, how law shapes foreign relations, and compares the constitutional orders of China, the UK and the United States. He is admitted to practice in New York

NLSIU recently launched a new conversation series by eminent speakers titled ‘Crafting Careers’.  our next session in this series features Ms. Astha Kapoor, Co-founder and Director, Aapti Institute
on January 7, 2026, from 5 pm to 6 pm at the NLS campus.

Crafting Careers

Crafting Careers is a new conversation series at the University under the NLS BA (Hons) programme, designed to help students navigate the world of work. Each session in the series brings leading professionals from fields such as media, government, public policy, business, finance, and the creative arts to campus for candid conversations about their journeys. These experts will share insights and advice from their professional experiences and offer reflections on how social science majors may relate to different career pathways. These dialogues will offer students a chance to learn from diverse experiences, gain practical insights, and reflect on how to build careers that align with their own interests, skills, and values.

About the Speaker

Astha has over a decade of public policy and strategy consulting experience, with a focus on the use of technology for welfare. At Aapti, Astha leads the Data Economy Lab, a vertical established to research and test new methods of data sharing, data stewardship and governance. Her recent work is focused on participative governance of data, and its use for building collaborative AI, through collective governance methods such as cooperatives. She serves on the advisory boards of the Data Trust Initiative (Cambridge University) and Indian Urban Data Exchange (IUDEX). Prior to Aapti, Astha worked with Future State, Azim Premji’s Philanthropic Initiatives, Dalberg Global Development Advisors, the Planning Commission, the Government of India and the Self-Employed Women’s Association. She’s a visiting fellow at the Ostrom Workshop (Indiana University), a two-time TEDx speaker, and a Global Governance Futures Fellow 2018-19. Astha’s writing has been published in the Mint, Hindu, and Deccan Herald among others.

 

 

Related Video – Watch the Crafting Careers Session with Mr. Vikram Bhat, Director, BIC, here: 

 

The National Law School of India University (NLSIU) was delighted to host artist Pushpamala N and scholar Deeptha Achar on January 7, 2026 as part of our Public Lectures series.

About the Lecture

‘Looking at Karnataka’s First Modern Artist K. Venkatappa’ by Pushpamala N

In her illustrated discussion of K. Venkatappa (after whom the Venkatappa Art Gallery in Bengaluru is named), artist Pushpamala N framed him as a crucial regional modernist shaped by Mysore court patronage who deviated from the colonial aesthetic of oil painting and the Bengal School’s spiritualised art. Patronised by Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV in Mysore and trained at the Madras School of Art and Crafts, Venkatappa absorbed Western academic techniques and familiar with anti-materialist, pan-Asian aesthetic debates associated with a figure like Abanindranath Tagore under whom he studied. Pushpamala highlighted how his practice, seen in series such as the Ramayana illustrations, Mad after Veena, charcoal drawings, bas-reliefs, and later landscapes, privileged colour, wash, or sculptural solidity over the Bengal School’s ethereal line. His muscular, grounded bodies, use of industrial materials like plaster, and mythic-classical themes reflected both a working-class sensibility and Mysore’s distinctive modernity. Overall, Venkatappa emerges as a “lost ancestor” in Karnataka, an artist who forged a regional aesthetic modernism that negotiated courtly patronage, nationalism, and experimentation without replicating Calcutta’s cultural hierarchy.

‘National Art, Regional Modernity, and the Litigious Life of K. Venkatappa’ by Deeptha Achar

Deeptha Achar read K. Venkatappa’s litigious life as central to understanding both his contradictory personality and the nexus between law, art, and Indian modernity. Moving between Mysore, Calcutta, and Bangalore, Venkatappa repeatedly turned to law as a mode of self-fashioning and public engagement, even as he cultivated the persona of an unworldly, inward-looking artist. Achar argues that his court cases—including disputes with institutions like the Indian Oriental Society and the dramatic but ultimately unsuccessful suit against the Mysore king—were not merely personal grievances but assertions of artistic worth, property, and dignity by someone marked by artisanal caste origins within a hierarchical courtly order. His insistence on litigation, even when compromise was offered, dramatised the radical promise of legal equality under modern law, while also revealing its social and material costs. Through his diaries written in English over many decades, law appears as a lived social space in which Venkatappa negotiated being “an artist rather than an artisan,” exposing the tensions between caste, profession, nationalism, and the fragile democratisation promised by modern legal institutions.

About the Speakers

Pushpamala N

Pushpamala N has been called “the most entertaining artist-iconoclast of contemporary Indian art”. In her sharp and witty work as a photo- and video-performance artist, sculptor, writer, and curator, and in her collaborations with writers, theatre directors and filmmakers, she seeks to subvert the dominant discourse. She is known for her strong feminist work, informed by cultural theory, feminist studies and social science. Her work is shown worldwide and is in the collections of major museums like the Museum of Modern Art New York, Tate Modern London, Centre Charles Pompidou Paris, Art Gallery of New South Wales Sydney, NGMA and KNMA Delhi and MAP Bangalore. She created a fictional platform for discourse, ‘Somberikatte’ (Idler’s Platform) in 1996 through which she organises talks and conferences. To celebrate 20 years of Somberikatte, she organised an international conference of the early modern artist K Venkatappa in Bangalore in 2016. Based on the papers presented at this conference, her co-edited volume: Nation, Region, Modernity: The Art of K. Venkatappa has been published by Routledge ( 2025). She was the Artistic Director of the Chennai Photo Biennale , ‘Fauna Of Mirrors’ , for which she also organised an international conference on photography, Light Writing (2019). Recently she curated the print retrospective exhibition of Gulammohammed Sheikh: ‘Hand Prints/ Mind Prints’ and is now working on the book. She lives and works in Bangalore.

Deeptha Achar

Deeptha Achar has just retired as Professor, Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Gujarat. Among the books she has co-edited are Towards New Art History: Studies in Indian Art (2003), and Articulating Resistance: Art and Activism (2012) apart from catalogue essays. Her most recent co-edited volume is Nation, Region, Modernity: The Art of K. Venkatappa (2025). She is the series editor of the Different Tales, a multilanguage series of illustrated children’s books that thematise marginalised childhoods. She has co-curated an archival show entitled Enlightenment from an Unlikely Envelope: Archives of Adil Jussawalla currently running at the Kerala Museum, Kochi. Her research interests include visual culture studies and childhood studies.