Aditi is a development professional with experience in rural grassroots. Prior to joining NLSIU, she worked in remote tribal blocks of rural Chhattisgarh towards building sustainable women collectives, creating livelihood prototypes, collective social action and PRI strengthening. She graduated with a Bachelors in Philosophy from University of Delhi and has a Master’s degree in Social Work specialising in ‘Community Organisation and Development Practice’ from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai.
Areas of interest: Deriving from her previous work engagement, she has a keen interest in understanding and engaging in public policy and governance from a gender lens. She is also interested in tribal practices and their representations.
Focus area at NLSIU: At present, she is primarily engaged with the Master’s Programme in Public Policy of the University.
Apoorv is currently a PhD Scholar at NLSIU, working under the supervision of Dr. Arul George Scaria. His thesis aims at exploring different contours of criminal enforcement of copyright in India. After graduating from NUALS, Kochi, Apoorv pursued his LLM from Cochin University of Science and Technology with a specialization in IPR. Following this, he joined the Centre for Innovation, Intellectual Property and Competition Law where he worked on Open Source textbooks on IP and Competition Law. Here, he was also involved in developing the curriculum and teaching students of the LLM professional programme.
Areas of interest: His interests primarily lies in examining the interaction between law, technology and society. His interest in IP began after a field trip to Kadamakudy village which aimed at studying the socio-economic impact of getting a Geographical Indication (Pokkali Rice). He has undertaken various online courses like CopyrightX by Harvard University, NPTEL course on Patent Drafting and WIPO online courses on ‘Intellectual Property and Right to Health’ and ‘Software Licensing’.
Focus area at NLSIU: At present, he is involved with teaching ‘Reading Judgement and statutes‘ course to the first-year MPP students. He will also be assisting in delivering the Post Graduate Diploma programme on Intellectual Property Rights.
Anushka Sachan completed her B.B.A. LL.B. at Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies and a master’s in Law and Technology from the University of Ottawa.
Her research and writing are rooted within South Asian polities and their regard for surveillance and privacy for women and other marginalised communities. Working with civil societies and grassroot organisations in India, her recent projects have explored the structural manifestation of digital violence and how it spills over in physical spaces.
Her focus area at NLSIU: Technology and Society.
Publications
- Agata Zwolankiewicz and Anushka Sachan, Big Data, Bigger Disruption: Is Institutional Arbitration Ready? Arbitration Bulletin, December 2020
Debaranjan completed his law degree from National Law University, Delhi in 2019. He has previously worked as a Legal Manager with ICICI Bank before transitioning as an independent litigator, focusing on civil commercial litigation. He completed his master’s degree in commercial law from the Melbourne Law School in 2023.
Areas of interest: His areas of interest include insolvency and restructuring, financial regulation, contract law and arbitration.
Focus area at NLSIU: At present, he is teaching a course on Regulatory Governance. He is also working with the Professional and Continuing Education (PACE) department on banking laws.
Ishita completed her undergraduate degree from Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat, with a focus on International Law. She completed her LLM in Law and Technology from WBNUJS, Kolkata, with a focus on developing guiding principles for the development and deployment of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems under International Humanitarian Law. She has previously worked as an in-house counsel, and thereafter as a Law Clerk at the Calcutta High Court, under Justice Rajasekhar Mantha, on primarily writ and criminal matters.
Prior to joining NLSIU, she worked as a Research Assistant at Jindal Global Law School on a project covering Health Insurance Discrimination in India under the Thakur Foundation Grant; with GNLU, Gandhinagar on a project measuring the Gaps and the Impact of Women-Centred Criminal laws in India; and with the Centre for Media and Entertainment Law at WBNUJS on a Project on Media Malpractice in India. She has also been closely associated with IDIA (Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access), the Charitable Trust started by Prof. Shamnad Basheer.
Areas of interest: International Law, Human Rights, Technology and Critical Legal Theory; She is especially passionate about Third World and Marginalised Approaches to Legal Theory.
Outside of work, she loves watching movies, especially noir, thrillers and nature documentaries. She is also a foodie, and loves experimenting with different cuisines. She is also addicted to watching Nat Geo and often binges on air crash investigations.
Focus area at NLSIU: She is currently assisting Prof. N S Nigam with his course on jurisprudence for undergraduate students, and will be working with the PACE department on the PG Diploma in Human Rights Law.
Ishika Saxena, a political theorist and policy researcher, graduated with distinction in Postcolonial Theory from SOAS, University of London, where she was awarded the ‘Special Language Scholarship’. Ishika holds a BA Liberal Arts (Political Science and Public Policy) with minors in English Literature, Philosophy and Psychology from the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts, Pune.
Her areas of interest relate to political thought and theory, public policy, critical theory, literature and aesthetics, philosophy, and ethics.
Publications
- ‘Ethical Decision Making: Problematizing the human and ethics, in the Context of Self-Driving Cars’ (book chapter in ‘Life Choices: Multidisciplinary essays on existentialism and ethics’, 2020)
- ‘Cognitive Psychology in the Context of Intersex and Trans Identities’ (Confluence: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 2019)
- ‘Search for Life’ (newsletter; The Indian Institute of Astrophysics, 2018)
Kiran Suryanarayana completed his schooling from Bishop Cotton Boys’ School and obtained his BA LLB (Hons) degree from School of Law, Christ University in 2020. He further completed a post graduate diploma in Liberal Studies, as a Young India Fellow from Ashoka University in 2021. He recently graduated from UCLA with an LLM and a dual specialization in Constitutional, International and Comparative Law.
Areas of interest: Presently, his main research interest pertains to the question of regulating political parties through the Constitution in democratic systems. He is fascinated by the intersection of Constitutional Law and International law, particularly regarding questions like the use of constitutions to bolster the effectiveness of international legal rules; and the impact of colonial legal architecture on such rules.
Outside of work, he loves food, and learning about how it’s embedded into our cultural landscape.
Focus area at NLSIU: Currently, he is working under Prof. Sudhir Krishnaswamy and Ms. Nanditta Batra on a project about locating Public Health in the Indian Constitution.
Manpreet is an interdisciplinary scholar interested in teaching and researching the complex entanglements between the body, law, and technology. He is engaged in thinking through, and illuminating various aspects of law, technology and society using the methodological approaches that informs Science, Technology and Society, and Socio-Legal Studies.
He comes with academic training in Literature, Sociology, Law, and Governance studies. He earned a PhD in Law and Governance from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Prior to joining NLSIU, he taught a variety of interdisciplinary courses as Adjunct Faculty in Sociology in the School of Undergraduate Studies, and as Adjunct Faculty in Social Sciences and Humanities in the School of Global Affairs at Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD). He is an active member of the Law and Social Sciences Research Network (LASSnet).
My focus area at NLSIU: I will be using my expertise and skills in creating a dynamic, creative and critical space for interdisciplinary studies of law from a social sciences and humanities perspective. My focus is to develop course content and syllabus, teach online & offline courses, carry out research, and publish in areas related to Law, Technology, and Governance.
Publications
- Dhillon, M., Narain, M., Mishra, P., Kansra, D., Chowdhury, N., & Puneeth, P. (2021). The DNA Technology (Use and Application) Regulation Bill, 2019: A Critical Analysis. ILI Law Review, Winter Issue, 278–301.
- A (Re)look at the Proposed DNA Regulatory Board, Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), Vol. 56, Issue 3, ISSN no: 0012-9976 (Print), 2349-8846 (Online)
- Governing DNA paternity testing in India, International Journal of Research in Social Sciences, Vol. 9, Issue 7, ISSN no: 2249-2496
- Why India needs a Privacy Commissioner
Nishtha graduated with a B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) from National Law University, Delhi. Her primary research interests are in the field of criminal law, which she has explored from different perspectives through her work over the last five years. After graduating in 2017, she worked at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi to study and evaluate the regulation of emerging technologies, particularly assessing the impact of technologies such as narco-analysis, BEAP etc. on the investigative capacities of law enforcement agencies. She also clerked with a judge of the High Court of Delhi, primarily researching and drafting briefs on criminal law matters.
To further probe the working of the criminal justice system, she worked as a Law Officer at Wildlife Conservation Society-India, as part of their Counter Wildlife Trafficking team. At WCS, she designed and executed India’s first study on legal gaps in prosecution of wildlife crimes across 6 states.
Pawani earned her degree in law from the National Law University Delhi in 2017. From 2017-18, she worked as a clerk at the Supreme Court of India, where her work focussed on land and criminal matters. Following this, she practiced in the trial courts and the High Court of Delhi, handling criminal and family law matters. She is pursuing an LLM as an Alex Chernov Scholar at the Melbourne Law School. Her areas of interest are criminal law, legal methods and constitutional law.
Her focus area at NLSIU: Teaching Criminal Law II under Prof. Dr. Mrinal Satish.
