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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

The Power of Cess-based Welfare Schemes

September 19, 2024

Author: Mohan Mani, Visiting Fellow, Centre for Labour Studies, National Law School of India University With 93 per cent of employment in the informal economy, sector-specific social security schemes offer a pragmatic solution for progressive…

Article

What the Internet Archive Case in the U.S. Means for Digital Book-lending

Dr. Arul George Scaria

September 10, 2024

The Internet Archive’s efforts have democratised access to more than 835 billion web pages and 44 million texts for anyone with an internet connection. Two of IA’s techno-legal experiments prompted a major copyright tussle with…

Article

An Empire of Artificial Intelligence: Exploring an Intersection of Politics, Society, and Creativity

Dr. Debangana Chatterjee

September 9, 2024

The ongoing creative upscaling of AI at the behest of OpenAI and the advent of ChatGPT are both remarkable and alarming. As things stand, this lesser-understood and unregulated field is riddled with futuristic speculations. And…

Article

Bill for Gig Workers Misses the Mark

Dr. Ashrita Prasad Kotha

September 6, 2024

Co-author: Madhulika T, research associate at the Centre for Labour Studies, NLSIU This article examines the Karnataka Platform-Based Gig Workers (Social Security and Welfare) Bill, 2024, recently proposed by the state government. The authors discuss…