News Type: News

Book Talks@NLS Library | ‘Queer Judgements’ | With QAMRA and Queer Judgments Project

NLSIU’s Queer Archive for Memory Reflection and Activism (QAMRA) in collaboration with the Queer Judgements Project (QJP), hosted a book discussion at the NLS Library on ‘Queer Judgements,’ an edited collection which was published by Counterpress in January 2025.

The book discussion was moderated by Dr. Siddharth Narrain, Faculty Director, QAMRA Archival Project, NLSIU, with panellists:

  • Vinay Chandran, Executive Director, Swabhava Trust
  • Aishwarya Birla, Assistant Professor of Law, NLSIU
  • Raju Behara, Researcher, Queer Judgements Project
  • Deedee, Impact Consultant
  • Radhika Chitkara, Assistant Professor of Law, NLSIU

QAMRA also displayed a small part of its collections for attendees to engage with at the NLS Library.

Abstract

The Queer Judgments Project is an initiative that evolved from disparate conversations between the current co-editors about how legal judgments related to sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics could have been written in different terms in light of relevant legal frameworks. This project brings together friends, colleagues, scholars, and activists who are interested in improving and challenging the law and its application to make life better for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and other minoritized people and communities.

This edited collection is the first output of the project and the pages of this book re-imagine, re-write and re-invent judgments, from queer and other complementing perspectives. With an international reach and multi-disciplinary scope, this edited collection invites you to a queer dance through 26 judgments and commentaries.

About QJP

The Queer Judgments Project is an initiative that evolved from disparate conversations between the current co-editors about how legal judgments related to sexual orientation, gender identity and expression and sex characteristics (SOGIESC) could have been written in more appropriate terms in light of the legal framework at the time. We wanted to cultivate a project that brought together friends, colleagues, and activists who were interested in improving and challenging the law and its application to make life better for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and other (LGBTIQ+) people and communities.

The main aim of the project is to re-imagine, re-write, re-invent, from queer and other complementing perspectives, judgments that have considered SOGIESC issues.

The project has an international reach and multi-disciplinary scope. Thus, individual contributors are free to choose which judgment they want to focus on, featuring voices from across the globe. Similarly, the audience is to include people outside of academia, marginalised people and young people.

About the Speakers

Vinay Chandran

Vinay Chandran is the Executive Director of Swabhava Trust, a non-governmental organisation in Bengalurur. Established in 1999, Swabhava works on providing access to support services for LGBTQIA+ populations. Swabhava’s programmes include the Sahaya Telephone Helpline (080-22230959), documentation and research, training and workshops, and support spaces for various LGBTQIA+ groups. Vinay is a peer counsellor on the Helpline and set up the projects in Swabhava. His research on healthcare perspectives on SOGI communities has been published (co-edited by Arvind Narrain) in Nothing to Fix: Medicalisation of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SAGE/Yoda Press, 2015). He is currently working on a follow-up book on healthcare discrimination in southern India.

Aishwarya Birla

Aishwarya joined NLSIU in 2022 as an Academic Fellow, and now works as Assistant Professor of Law at NLSIU and Research Associate for the Pluralist Agreement and Constitutional Transformation (PACT) project. Her broad interests include human rights law, anti-discrimination, refugee law, and constitutional law.

 

Raju Behara

Raju is a non-binary disabled poet and expressive arts practitioner whose work centers queerness, disability, and anti-caste resistance through hybrid forms like blackout and found poetry. Their practice focuses on chronicling and re-imagining erased histories of queer-trans communities via community-led initiatives, including a trans-led expressive arts cohort with the Piravi Art Community. In 2022, they initiated Redefining Queerscapes, a movement using workshops to transform legal texts into protest poetry, archived in the Queer Judgments Project, Reframe Journal and multiple anthologies. Their debut collection, Withering Tempests (2021), explores queer isolation, and their writings on queer-trans journeys in urban spaces in India appears in journals and queer collectives. As an EQUAL fellow and a collaborator with the Asia Pacific Trans Network, Raju documented systemic healthcare barriers faced by trans youth and led Queer & Quarantine, a crisis-intervention initiative, during the pandemic.

Deedee

Deedee is an independent impact consultant supporting Trans- and Women-led organisations across India. Her work is grounded in feminist, anti-caste, and anti-colonial frameworks. She previously served as South Asia Co-Leader at Ashoka Young Changemakers, a Washington D.C.-based organisation known for pioneering the field of social entrepreneurship. An experienced organizer and fundraiser, she has mobilized over $1 million and trained 10,000+ students and educators on the relationship between Empathy and Power in everyday praxis. Deedee holds a Philosophy degree from the University of Delhi, where she also partnered with the Vice Chancellor’s office to advance inclusive student leadership.

Radhika Chitkara

Radhika is an Assistant Professor of Law at NLSIU, Bengaluru, where she is also pursuing her PhD on “Policing Terror: A Legal Cartography of Institutions, Powers and Functions” as Dr. NR Madhav Menon Doctoral Scholar and a grantee of the Law and Social Transformation Grant administered by DAAD-UGC. She is an Editor of the National Law School Journal, and has over twelve years of experience as a human rights scholar and practitioner. Her research interests include policing and civil liberties, gender, and indigenous peoples’ rights.

Gallery

Talk on ‘Reconsidering Dignity in Theory and Practice’ by Prof. Susan Marks, Professor of International Law, LSE Law School

NLSIU’s UNHCR Chair on Refugee Law organised a talk on ‘Reconsidering Dignity in Theory and Practice’ by Prof. Susan Marks, Professor of International Law, LSE Law School. The talk took place at the Allen & Overy Hall at the Training Centre at the NLS campus on July 28, 2025.

While at NLSIU, Prof. Marks met with the international law and human rights teaching cohort and the Council for International Relations and International Law (CIRIL), a student-run committee.

About the Talk

A central concept in constitutional and human rights law, dignity is understood to refer to the inherent worth and value of every human being, and the respect that is due to all of us simply by virtue of our being human. Whereas earlier notions of dignity were tied to status and rank, the modern conception of human dignity is celebrated as egalitarian and universal. But what if human dignity still remains bound up with hierarchy, privilege and rank? This talk will explore that question.

Speaking to us, Prof. Marks said:

“Dignity is a central concept in constitutional law and international law. There’s a huge amount of literature already on dignity, but most of it is extremely abstract, and I was interested in what it would mean to examine dignity as a worldly concept, as a relational concept, as something embodied and experienced.”

It is also the subject of her new book:

“My new book is called Trucanini’s Stare. The title comes from one of the chapters that looks at the situation of a Tasmanian indigenous woman in the 19th century who was photographed many times. She was subjected to a form of anthropometric photography, which is very undignified. But at another level. I found her to possess an incredible dignity in her bearing and that intrigued me and led me to explore her situation further.”

About the Speaker

Susan Marks is Professor of International Law in the School of Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She previously taught at the University of Cambridge and King’s College London. Her research seeks to bring insights from critical social theory to the study of international law and human rights. She is the author of The Riddle of All Constitutions, International Human Rights Lexicon (co-written with Andrew Clapham), A False Tree of Liberty and Trucanini’s Stare, and edited a volume entitled International Law on the Left.

Gallery

Muse@NLS Library | ‘Rain Incarnations’ | Poetry Reading With Prof. Bishnu Mohapatra

NLSIU’s Library Committee organised a poetry reading by Prof. (Dr.) Bishnu N. Mohapatra, Professor of Politics and Director of Moturi Satyanarayana Centre for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, KREA University.

About the event

Poet and political scientist, Prof. Bishnu Mohapatra, brought both his worlds together at NLSIU while discussing his recently published poetry collection ‘Rain Incarnations‘ (Speaking Tiger, 2025). The poetry reading session was organised at the NLS Library Basement on Monday, 4 August 2025, at 4 PM by NLS faculty Dr. Rinku Lamba.

Rain, an enduring figure in poetry across languages, finds fresh expression, in the 35 poems of this volume. NLS faculty Keerthana Venkatesh, opened the session with a welcome note, followed by Ammel Sharon who reflected on the many ways Indian traditions evoke the monsoon across musical forms, classical and folk, through recurring motifs like thunder, frogs, and lovers, each shaped by mood and raga.

Prof. Mohapatra recited the traditions he carries: his mother’s poetry, modern Odia verse, the Ramcharitmanas, and Faiz, alongside selections from his wide ranging collection in Odia and in English. The discussion flowed from the idea of a Puranic “Barshavatar” to questions about the relationship between the poetical and the political. In response, he read his rain poem on Socrates and spoke of his own examination of metaphysical ideas. The evening closed on a note of possibility and, as one student put it, “revolutionary optimism.”

About the poet

Prof. Bishnu Mohapatra is a well-known Indian poet who writes his poetry in Odia. Currently, he is a Professor of Politics and the Director of Moturi Satyanarayana Centre for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences at KREA University, Sri City, Andhra Pradesh, India. He served as the regional anchor of India and South Asia for the World Humanities Report (WHR), published in 2024.

Prof. Mohapatra has authored five volumes of poetry and has translated two volumes of Pablo Neruda’s poetry into Odia. A Fragile World, a book of his poetry in English translation, was published in 2008. He served as the national jury member for the Moortidevi Award of Bharatiya Jnanpith, Delhi, from 2013 to 2015. A volume of his poetry in Hindi translation – Buddha aur Aam – was published by Pralek Prakashan, Mumbai, in 2022. Prof. Mohapatra’s poetry carries not only a theorist’s critical gaze but, more importantly, a seeker’s voice. In terms of great uncertainty and disenchantment, his poetry seeks to re-enchant the world without drowning out contemporary realities.

A volume of his poetry in translation – Rain Incarnations – was published by Speaking Tiger in 2025. He is in the process of completing a volume of Rilke’s poetry in Odia translation.

Report Launch | ‘Unmaking Citizens’ | Access to Justice in Citizenship Determination Project, NLSIU & Queen Mary University of London

The Access to Justice in Citizenship Determination Project, NLSIU, and Queen Mary University of London launched a report on the Foreigners Tribunals in Assam titled ‘Unmaking Citizens’ on July 26, 2025. The launch took at Teen Murti Bhavan, Teen Murti Marg, New Delhi. 

The report was authored by Mohsin Alam Bhat (Queen Mary University of London), and researchers Arushi Gupta, and Shardul Gopujkar, with the support of researchers and law students from NLSIU.

Read the Report

Speakers

  • Hon’ble Mr Justice Madan Lokur (Retired), former Judge, Supreme Court of India
  • Dr. Usha Ramanathan, Human Rights Activist and Independent Researcher
  • Mr. HRA Choudhary, Senior Advocate, Gauhati High Court
  • Dr. Mohsin Alam Bhat, Assistant Professor of Law, Queen Mary University of London
  • Ms. Darshana Mitra, Assistant Professor of Law and Director-Clinics, NLSIU

About the Report

Based on 1,193 High Court cases, landmark Supreme Court rulings, and in-depth field interviews, the Unmaking Citizens report offers the most comprehensive study yet of Assam’s Foreigners Tribunals. It reveals a legal system in deep crisis: over 165,000 people have already been declared “foreigners,” with 85,000+ cases pending and more than 1 million NRC appeals potentially headed to these opaque tribunals. The report documents widespread arbitrariness in decision-making, including the wholesale rejection of documentary and oral evidence, and the absence of legal norms to protect individuals from wrongful targeting. These are not isolated failures—they reflect an institutionalised machinery of exclusion, with severe regional and national implications.

In the Press

The Hindu | Assam’s Foreigners’ Tribunals disregard constitutional safeguards: report
The Wire | Assam’s Foreigners’ Tribunals Are Instruments of Exclusion, New Report Says
The Hindu | Clerical errors in documents “fatal” for citizenship in Assam: Study
The Leaflet | Assam’s Foreigners Tribunals system lacks a secure legal foundation, is vulnerable to executive interference 

For queries, please write to

Call for Applications | Research Associate to work on the Just Transitions on Indian Streets project | 2 positions

The National Law School of India University (NLSIU) invites applications for two full-time Research Associate positions to work on the Just Transitions on Indian Streets (JusTIS) project. The position is up to March 2027 and will be based in Bengaluru, with some time spent on fieldwork in Delhi and Kolkata.

The project is the recipient of The British Academy’s Knowledge Frontiers: International Interdisciplinary Research Projects Award for 2025-27 in collaboration with the University of Oxford. Research Associates will report to the project’s co-investigator, Dr. Anwesha Ghosh, who is a faculty member at NLSIU.

About the Project

Just Transitions on Indian Streets (JusTIS) is a collaborative research project that explores how Indian cities can respond to climate change in ways that are fair and inclusive for street-based workers. These workers—such as street vendors, platform workers, and informal transport operators—play a vital role in everyday urban life but are often excluded from decisions that shape the cities they help sustain. As India undertakes major urban and climate transitions, the project seeks to centre the voices, experiences, and knowledge of these workers in planning for more equitable and sustainable urban futures.

The project views the street not just as a space of mobility and commerce but as a key site where climate impacts are directly experienced, where everyday survival strategies are practiced, and where struggles for workers’ rights are played out. JusTIS develops a critical decolonial praxis of dignity and recognition, addressing the systemic invisibility and misrecognition faced by street-based workers in both climate and urban policies. By documenting workers’ knowledge, practices, and histories, the project aims to challenge top-down approaches to climate action and promote more grounded, inclusive alternatives.

With an aim to develop a deeper understanding of how cultures of misrecognition and systemic invisibility affect street-based workers, JusTIS takes a comparative approach to understanding the impacts of climate change on streets in major Indian cities. By examining the experiences of these workers in Bengaluru, Delhi, and Kolkata, the project explores how social injustices and climate vulnerability intersect with each other. The research uses an interdisciplinary methodology, including surveys, oral histories, archival research, and workshops, to capture a comprehensive picture of these issues.

Role Description

The Research Associate will be responsible for:

  • Working with the research team in conducting surveys and interviews with the project’s various stakeholders.
  • Assisting in the organisation of participant workshops in research cities.
  • Helping with archival research in research cities related to the project.
  • Transcribing data from surveys, interviews, workshops, and other activities.
  • Undertaking comprehensive literature reviews on relevant topics.
  • Helping with hosting a 2-day in-person academic workshop at NLSIU.
  • Attending meetings and reading groups organised by the PI and/or Co-Is.
  • Maintain monthly progress reports on the activities and budget.
  • Assist in any other tasks as required.

A. Qualifications

Essential

  • Master’s degree in social sciences, law, public policy, or allied disciplines

Desirable

  • Academic background in urban studies, geography, anthropology, mobilities research or cognate fields
  • Working knowledge of NVivo or an equivalent software package to analyse qualitative data

B. Experience

Essential

  • 2-3 years of research experience post-master’s degree or early career research scholars awaiting PhD defence in issues of livelihood, dignity, and justice.
  • Proficiency in at least one of the following languages: Bengali, Hindi, Kannada.

Desirable

  • Familiarity with academic debates on the topics of just transitions, decolonisation, and environmental justice.
  • Prior experience of conducting fieldwork in research cities and engaging with relevant stakeholders.
  • Experience of contributing to research publications.
  • Experience in project coordination roles within a research team.
  • Flexibility in working from Delhi or/and Kolkata as per project requirements.

C. Skills and Competencies

  • Excellent communication and writing skills.
  • Strong execution rigour and operational skills.
  • Strong presentation and time management skills.

How to apply?

Please use the Google form here, and include the following documents:

  • An up-to-date CV
  • A statement of purpose (not more than 500 words)
  • Contact details and designation of one reference

Compensation

Salary will be commensurate with qualification and experience and will be in the range of Rs. 60,000 – Rs 70,000 per month.

For any queries, please write to .

Deadline

The last date for submission of applications is August 4, 2025 (5 pm IST).

NLS Faculty Seminar | ‘Decolonial Dilemmas in Development Cooperation’

In this week’s faculty seminar, Dr. Sudheesh R C, Assistant Professor, Social Science, presented on ‘Decolonial Dilemmas in Development Cooperation.’ The seminar was held on July 23, 2025, in the Ground Floor Conference Hall at NLSIU’s Training Centre.

Abstract

This article examines Triangular Cooperation, which is garnering popularity in the development sector and is purportedly devoid of the old hierarchies associated with international development. The article locates this emerging mode of cooperation in the context of discussions on decolonisation and turns attention to the need to update the registers used to critique international development. Through an analysis of an array of project documents and a reflexive account of the author’s experiences in the aid sector, it explores the subtle forms of power that play out when “pivotal,” “beneficiary” and “facilitating” partners enter a project. The article argues that such an enquiry helps nuance our examination of coloniality in contemporary times. The article thereby calls for renewed attention to Triangular Cooperation in critical development studies that is currently preoccupied with South-South Cooperation.

Talk on ‘AI in Law’ by Vasu Aggarwal of Lucio AI

The JSW Centre for the Future of Law at NLSIU organised an interactive session on ‘AI in Law’ with Mr. Vasu Aggarwal (NLS BA LLB 2023), Co-Founder of Lucio AI, on July 23, 2025. The session covered current practices, opportunities and challenges for AI providers and legal adopters.

Abstract

Large Language Models (LLMs) demonstrate capabilities that could substantially impact legal operations. For this to come to fruition, there is a need to realise the capacity of lawyers to fully utilise these tools in regular legal tasks. The discussion brought together the two composite stakeholders in this scenario, the service creators and providers in the form of AI-based legal solutions, and the law firm context for which they are designed. The speakers explored the challenges, opportunities and contours of change that present themselves in the meeting of AI and legal practice.

Speaking to our students, Mr. Aggarwal said:
“It’s all about context. Knowing how and when to use AI, will give you better results. I strongly suggest that one way to be relevant today is to learn how to use AI. Associates in law firms who know how to use AI are irreplaceable in this market.”

About Lucio

Pranav Kumar, Founders’ Office, Lucio:
“Lucio is a horizontal AI platform that essentially has a suite of functions that are useful for lawyers in their day-to day-workflow. This involves transaction lawyers, dispute lawyers, and even other lawyers who do other kinds of work. This involves day-to-day functioning with an ‘assistant’ that we have, which helps you with everything that you need to do. You can input queries, you can get research responses, etc. We also have something called a ‘briefcase’ which allows you to input an unlimited number of documents and individually chat with each document. Then we have something called ‘chronologies’ that helps you build a chronology out of multitudes of documents that you have. These are functions that lawyers will need to do for every case. So this makes their workflow much simpler.
Now how it works in the back end is we have a bunch of agents – we have 15 right now and we’re scaling to about a 100 – which work in the background for specific legal tasks. For example, when you require a summarisation, it will pick out the agent which has been programmed to do the best summarisation possible by wrapping multiple AI models and multiple agentic workflows. So we have multiple agents to do multiple things which work on the back end and help a lawyer in their daily workflow to make their work simpler.”

Gallery

Invitation to teach Elective Courses at NLSIU | November 2025 – January 2026 Trimester

NLSIU invites interested persons to offer Elective Courses at the University in the second trimester (November 3, 2025 to January 23, 2026) of the Academic Year 2025-26.

An elective course at NLSIU requires 40 hours of classroom engagement spread across 10 weeks and two office hours every week for consultation and discussion with students.

All classes of full-term elective courses shall be conducted in-person at the NLSIU campus in Bengaluru.

On request and availability, the University may support Visiting Faculty with an Academic Associate to assist with the delivery of the course.

Elective Courses vary in their focus and pedagogy. Three types of Elective Courses are common at NLSIU:

  • Taught Course (predominantly lecture/discussion-based, with an exam);
  • Research Course (focussed on review of primary and secondary research leading to a Term Paper);
  • Practice or Clinical Course (focussed on field work, simulation, drafting or litigation exercises taught and examined through the clinical methods).

All classes shall be held between 9 am and 7 pm on weekdays only. Most elective courses are usually scheduled between 2 pm and 7 pm.

The University will reimburse one economy-class airfare, to-and-fro from Bengaluru for domestic flights only. The University will make necessary arrangements for accommodation for individuals selected to teach electives after mutual discussion for an initial 10 days from the commencement of the Trimester only. The University will not be able to provide any reimbursement for international flights.

Individuals who are desirous of teaching elective courses at NLSIU must invariably possess a graduate and post-graduate degree in Law or the Social Sciences. Post-qualification experience of 3 years or more will be preferred. Alternatively, they may have at least 7-10 years of post-qualification experience in legal practice. Individuals who have published widely in their fields of expertise, shall be preferred.

To apply, kindly fill out the form here. The last date to submit the form has been extended to August 24, 2025.

Your proposal shall be reviewed by the Academic Review Committee (ARC) of the University. The course shall be finalised after registration of choices by students. Please note that a course is offered only if it meets: (1) the approval of the ARC, and (2) a minimum number of students, as required by the University’s Academic Regulations, subscribe for the course.

For any academic queries please contact Dr. Saurabh Bhattacharjee at . For any other queries, please contact Mr. Shailendra Pratap Singh at .

FAQs

Here are some FAQs that will help you gain a better understanding of the electives courses and the process for applying to teach these courses. To know more, please click here.

Call for Submissions | Volume 16(2) of the Indian Journal of International Economic Law (IJIEL) | Developing Countries and the Future of ISDS

The Indian Journal of International Economic Law (IJIEL), published by the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, under the patronage of the WTO Chair, is now accepting submissions for its upcoming Volume 16(2), which will focus on Developing Countries and the Future of Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS).

About the Theme

ISDS is a central mechanism in international economic law, empowering foreign investors to bring claims against sovereign States. Despite this, the perspectives of developing countries—who are most frequently the respondents—remain marginalized in mainstream academic and policy discourse.

This Special Issue aims to foreground the experiences and priorities of developing nations at a moment when the ISDS system is under increasing scrutiny. As of 2023, over 1,330 known ISDS cases have been filed globally, with nearly 62% involving developing-country respondents. Concerns have mounted over “regulatory chill,” where governments delay or dilute social and environmental reforms for fear of triggering high-value claims.

Against the backdrop of global reform efforts (such as UNCITRAL Working Group III), this issue invites contributions that critically examine the legal, economic, and institutional aspects of ISDS from the vantage point of developing countries.

Suggested Sub-Themes

We welcome submissions on topics including but not limited to:

  • Compensation in Investment Arbitration: Evolving standards and valuation controversies in ISDS damages (e.g., speculative future profits, disproportionate awards).
  • Beyond Investment Arbitration: Alternatives such as mediation, multilateral courts, or state-to-state resolution; analysis of their viability for developing countries.
  • ISDS and Climate Change: Investor challenges to environmental policies; treaty carve- outs; tensions between investment protection and sustainability.
  • Procedural and Interpretational Issues: Jurisdiction, bifurcation, cost allocation, transparency, and evolving doctrinal standards (e.g., fair and equitable treatment, expropriation).
  • Third Party Funding (TPF): Growing use of TPF in ISDS; implications for access to justice, fairness, and regulatory responses.

Comparative and interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged.

For more details, read the concept note here.

Submission Guidelines

  • Submissions for the special issue may be made in accordance with our Submission Guidelines under any of the mentioned categories. For further clarity on the categories, please refer here.
  • Interested authors are requested to submit their manuscripts via our Digital Commons portal. Please refer to this guide for instructions and clarifications with respect to navigating Digital Commons.
  • The deadline for submissions is October 15, 2025.

Please note that we do not accept submissions over email.

Contact

For queries, please email: .

Talk on ‘Experimental Times: Startup Capitalism and Feminist Futures in India’ | HUPA Chair on Urban Poor and the Law

NLSIU’s HUPA Chair on Urban Poor and the Law organised a book talk on ‘Experimental Times: Startup Capitalism and Feminist Futures in India‘ by Dr. Hemangini Gupta, Lecturer, Gender and Global Politics, Department of Politics, University of Edinburgh. The talk took place at the Training Centre at the NLS campus on July 25, 2025.

About the Book

Experimental Times: Startup Capitalism and Feminist Futures in India is an in-depth ethnography of the transformation of Bengaluru/Bangalore from a site of “backend” IT work to an aspirational global city of enterprise and innovation. In this talk, we journeyed alongside the migrant workers, technologists, and entrepreneurs who shape and survive the dreams of a “Startup India” knitted through office work, at networking meetings and urban festivals, and across sites of leisure in the city. Tracking techno-futures that involve automation and impending precarity, the author will detail the everyday forms of experimentation, care, and friendship that sustain and reproduce life and labour in India’s current economy.

About the Speaker

Dr. Hemangini’s interests include feminist and queer theory; activism; postcolonial and decolonial theory; cities; labour; capital; technoscience; and racialisation. She has a PhD in Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies from Emory University, Atlanta, US. Her research and teaching interests include transnational feminisms, capitalist spaces and temporalities, and labour and technology in the South.

Her current research unfolds along two major strands:

One project is concerned with the transforming conditions of social reproduction under entrepreneurial and platform capitalism. Within this, she has also undertaken collaborative and multimodal ethnographic fieldwork with workers in entrepreneurial companies to innovate with new methods needed to understand work that is fragmented and dispersed across city spaces. Her research focusses on forms of difference within entrepreneurial economies to understand how historical structures of oppression shape access to finance, funding, and possibilities for labour mobility.

A second strand of research queries the ecological costs and entanglements of large scale data projects. Interrogating technological visions for environmental justice, she asks how we might trace the changes in land and water that accompany a move to “cloud” economies. Offering a grounded and historical context to imaginations and practices of ecological futures, this project situates technological future-making within the infrastructural and logistical architectures through which it is materialised.

Speaking to us, Hemangini said:

“My book ‘Experimental Times’ is about the remaking of Bangalore from a site of backend work to a city that is now celebrated by middle class entrepreneurs and state officials as a global ‘ecosystem’ for innovative startup work. I ask how this refashioning happens – and the question led to fieldwork at accelerator labs, Startup Festivals, and networking meetings but also to the workers who power this economy. I based myself at small and midsize entrepreneurial companies, working alongside a young and often migrant workforce, to understand how this new economy shapes life and labour.

I came to this research wanting to understand what changes in women’s lives with economic shifts – do they enjoy different forms of independence, freedom in the city, and more decisions in their personal and familial lives?”

Gallery