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Research

Committed to reforming legal education and the pursuit of academic excellence, NLSIU places significant emphasis on legal and policy research. Research at NLSIU is primarily carried out through its Centres, Chairs, multi-year research projects, and through individual faculty initiatives. The University’s specialised research centres have been repeatedly called upon to shape laws and improve implementation in intellectual property, child rights, and environmental laws, among many others. The Research Policy of the University is available here.

In 2020, NLSIU identified five focus areas where it will develop new interdisciplinary research clusters:

  • Labour and Work
  • Climate Justice
  • State Capacity and Reform
  • Access to Justice & Legal System Reform
  • Law, Technology and Society

In Focus

Health Law

While NLS has a research centre dedicated to Health Law and Ethics, the University has entered into a slew of collaborations in this domain. Some of our recent research initiatives are listed below. Project on...

Working Lives: Documenting Labour Histories

The QAMRA Archival Project is concerned with the nature of record-keeping in postcolonial India. Records in the postcolonial state archives from the 1980s onward will determine what future historians will base their studies on for...

Enquiring into India’s state capacity

India’s COVID-19 crisis has resulted in unprecedented levels of demand on its public institutions, demands they have comprehensively failed to meet. Scholars have generally been in agreement when characterising India’s state capacity, or its ability...

Research Entities

Centres

NLSIU’s research centres anchor original and deep research on a broad range of critical areas. They also form nodes through which faculty, students and scholars publicly engage on these issues to inform, educate and help shape reform measures. From human rights and gender equality to leading environmental law research and emerging issues on law and technology, NLSIU’s research centres continue to engage with and impact key societal concerns in every decade.

Chairs

Research Chairs at NLS aim to advance knowledge in their respective fields through original inquiry, promotion of academic debate and dissemination of the latest research and findings. They play a critical role in strengthening the teaching, research and training capabilities of the University as a whole.

Projects & Grants

Continuing our research efforts, NLSIU has entered into a slew of collaborations both at the local and international level. This is in addition to the various projects undertaken by our research Centres and Chairs. We hope to initiate more such collaborations in the coming months and bring together scholars and researchers from across India and around the world to produce innovative and relevant outcomes through our research.

Journals

NLS is home to several interdisciplinary journals that have carried articles by leading scholars and experts over the years, and been cited by the Supreme Court on several occasions. The journals have a commitment to open access and the promotion of legal writing, and occupy an important space in legal academia in India.

Publications

Article

Water Management and Conservation in India Fostering Water Justice: Arguing for Adopting Just Sustainability in Water Governance

Dr. Gayathri D. Naik

June 22, 2025

Co-Author: Sanjay Shenoi P, Doctoral Scholar, School of Law, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru The paper examines adopting the ‘just sustainability’ principle in India’s water governance that can balance human water demands and ecological…

Article

Why no one is talking about counting caste in Kerala

Dr. Sudheesh R C, Dr. Dayal Paleri

June 13, 2025

The two major political fronts have remained ambivalent about the caste census. This reflects not only fears about electoral arithmetic, but also deeper apprehensions that it could disrupt Kerela’s carefully maintained political stability and expose…

Article

The Improvement Regime: Public Trusts, Real Estates, and India’s Urban Futurities

Dr. Anwesha Ghosh

June 13, 2025

This article suggests that rather than studying the “failures” of the individual trusts to foster sanitary built environments, we should pay attention to the contingent workings of the city trusts that were constitutively designed for…

Article

As India’s groundwater runs dry, calls for reform grow

Dr. Gayathri D. Naik

June 12, 2025

“The worsening water crisis highlights an urgent need for better groundwater governance in India.” Views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the opinion or stand of the…