Emeritus, Honorary and Foundation Fellows

Meghmala graduated from National Law University Odisha, in 2018 with B.B.A., LL.B. (Hons) topping her batch with 7 gold medals. She is reading for the BCL at Somerville College, and hopes to continue her time in Oxford by studying for a DPhil as she intends to frame and simplify the manner in which corporate law is taught in India.

She thanks her alma mater for providing a generous academic scholarship for 4 years which funded her studies, and provided her the impetus to become an advocate and practice in India. Professionally, she has represented both established and start-up clients receiving equity and debt investments over the past 4 years. These few years of practice has also helped her in refine her understanding of corporate law and its evolution.  

She is interested in exploring the convergences of company law across common law jurisdictions and the influence of British colonialism on corporate law in India. Her specific interest lies in investor rights, and the interplay of their rights vis-à-vis the company as an entity, and is keen to explore how the exercise of investor rights may also lead to the downfall of corporations.

She is grateful to the HSA Advocates Scholarship, the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development and Somerville College for having given her the rare opportunity of pursuing her passion and read the BCL. She is looking forward to learn from some of the world’s leading professors and engage with a group of accomplished individuals where she will be able to discuss how local customs and practises are impacting multinational corporations as they enter niche jurisdictions.

I am an Associate Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy (AFHEA). At Somerville College, I teach French Language, Translation, Orals and Essay.

I have been teaching French ‘language cafés’ and French ‘research-based language tutorials’ at the University of Birmingham since 2020. I have also been an English academic language tutor at AWAS (Academic Writing Advisory Service) for the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Birmingham since 2021. 

Research

My research interests revolve around colonial and postcolonial encounters between France and North Africa and the literary productions that emanate from these encounters. My PhD in French and Francophone Studies reads Algerian identity from the prism of the Sahara. It posits the Sahara Desert as an accurate analytical prism through which we can understand complex paradigms related to cultural identities in Algeria, and North Africa in general. I am interested in researching how colonial encounters in spaces like the Sahara shape and make visible, but also invisible different memories, histories and identities. More broadly, I am interested in 20^th and 21^st-century French and Algerian literatures, and I am currently researching the imprint of imperial legacies on postcolonial societies and how the latter resist but also perpetuate the colonial tropes in literary writing.

John Traill is a prominent conductor, composer, and educator.

He values musical endeavours at all levels and he fervently promotes music for all, with a particular focus in higher education. As Director of Music at St. Anne’s, John co-ordinates music across the breadth of the academic community. With twenty years experience combining freelance performance with academic positions at leading UK conservatoires and universities, John is currently also director of the Oxford Conducting Institute, the St Anne’s Camerata, Ensemble ISIS (the new music group at Oxford Faculty of Music), the City of Southampton Orchestra, and the Oxfordshire County Youth Orchestra.  Previous academic positions include acting Head of Performance at Bangor University, Teaching Fellow positions at Royal Holloway and King’s College, University of London, and lectureships at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, and Bristol University.

My research has two main threads: self-representation and social biases in (multisensory) perception and action; and adolescent wellbeing and mental health. I am currently working on new research at the intersection of these areas. Alongside self-representation, I have interests in anxiety and autistic cognition. I have extensive experience in patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) and co-production. I am passionate about public outreach and laying the groundwork for co-developing interventions and applications in wellbeing and mental health.

My research methodologies draw on techniques from cognitive, social, and developmental psychology, social neuroscience, and psychophysics (e.g., mental chronometry, surveys, and previously, EEG, tDCS), and involve both quantitative and qualitative research. I also use multisensory tasks (i.e. using audiovisual stimuli) to investigate social biases impacting both audition and vision.

At Somerville, I teach the undergraduate prelim course in Psychology (subjects including: developmental psychology, sensory processes and perception, social psychology, psychobiology, and cognitive psychology) and on the Psychology for Medicine course.

I completed my DPhil in Experimental Psychology at Oxford in 2022, and went on to join Somerville College as lecturer in Experimental Psychology, and Postdoctoral Research Fellow in adolescent mental health (University of Reading). Prior to my DPhil, I worked as a Research Assistant in stroke research at the Cognitive Neuropsychology Centre (CNC), and as a Laboratory Demonstrator in Neuroanatomy and Perception, at the Department of Experimental Psychology. I also have a background in music and sound production, and alongside my academic research have engineered and consulted on sound for departmental academic research projects, as well as co-developed evidence-based music-, art-, and video-based ‘wellbeing tools’ to support adolescent mental health.

I am a Junior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford.

My main research interests are in the ‘human side’ of the future of work, the emotional bases of political behavior, and the economic determinants of subjective wellbeing (or “happiness”).

My work has been published in various academic journals including the Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and American Journal of Political Science. I am also passionate about science communication and public engagement, and have written about my research for various outlets including Harvard Business Review, VoxEU, The Conversation, SPSP Character & Context, The Hill, and UN World Happiness Report. My research has also been featured by news outlets including The Economist, Financial Times, BBC, CNN, The Atlantic, Business Insider, Newsweek, and The Guardian.

I am currently working on two related research projects:

First, in my dissertation project, I analyse the relationship of movement control and state building processes. By drawing from ideational critical juncture and institutional order arguments and by comparing political developments in Europe, the British Empire, and the United States, I show that there exist long exclusionary traditions of movement control in today’s Western democracies. I argue that practices of movement control are often underpinned by ideas about colonialism, race, and differential humanity. The monopolisation and institutionalisation of movement control in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is closely entangled with the rise of the modern nation state system.

Secondly, I am interested in the phenomenon of illiberalism in liberal democracies. As outlined in a recent article, I argue that what is commonly referred to as illiberalism should be analytically separated into two concepts: one anti-democratic variant termed disruptive illiberalism and one rooted in the politics of exclusion termed ideological illiberalism. By analysing these two strains individually, I develop a general theory of illiberalism in liberal democracies and try to answer the central question that motivated both of my projects: Why do even purportedly liberal democracies regularly and frequently engage in glaringly illiberal acts?

In my research, I combine approaches from history and the social sciences to uncover distal causes of political traditions and the interactions of ideas and institutions. My work employs qualitative, historical, and comparative methods. My primary supervisor is Desmond King. My secondary supervisors are Andrew Thompson (College) and Matthew Gibney (Department).

Before starting the DPhil in Politics at Oxford’s Department of Politics and International Relations and Nuffield College, I completed the MSc in Politics Research (St Hilda’s College, Oxford). I hold a double-major BA in History and Political Science from Heidelberg University, Germany. During my studies at Heidelberg, I spent a year at St Hugh’s College. My Bachelor and Master’s programmes in Heidelberg and Oxford were funded by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation and St Hilda’s College. My doctoral studies have been jointly funded by Nuffield College and the Economic and Social Research Council’s Grand Union DTP (Migration Pathway). I previously acted as the Action Reconciliation Service for Peace Fellow (ARSP) at the Holocaust Center of the Jewish Federation and the August Wilson Center for African American Culture, both Pittsburgh, PA, and as the Allianz Foundation Fellow at ARSP in Philadelphia, PA.

I teach Prelims Politics at Somerville College and offer undergraduate teaching of papers 205: “The Government and Politics of the United States” and 212: “International Relations in the Era of Two World Wars”. I offer postgraduate seminars in Qualitative Methods.

As of 2022, I am an AFHEA.

Alonso Gurmendi Dunkelberg is a Departmental Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Oxford, in association with Somerville College, as well as Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Alonso holds a Ph.D. from UCL Laws, where he researched the history of the laws of war in the 19^th and early 20^th century, foregrounding the work of actors in Latin America, South West Africa and East Asia, among others. His book, Conflicto Armado en el Perú: La Época del Terrorismo bajo el Derecho Internacional, published by Universidad del Pacífico Press in 2019, addresses the role of international humanitarian law in Peru’s post-conflict reconciliation process. He is also a contributing editor for the international law blog Opinio Juris. His research focuses on the history of international legal politics, with a particular interest on the regulation of war and political violence, as well as on postcolonial approaches to international politics.

Katherine studies the efficacy of epigenetic inhibitors in exocrine and endocrine pancreatic cancers

Ritheka Sundar holds an undergraduate degree in economics from Stella Maris College in Chennai. She aims to contribute towards building an empathetic society, with reduced poverty, so that people from marginalised social and economic backgrounds have an increased access to better opportunities and subsequently, a better life.

While performing research for a course in Agricultural Economics, she learned that women farmers are more constrained by the lack of access to land, technology, and financial resources.

In this light, she is specifically interested in analysing gender-based income inequalities within the agricultural labour market in India while also considering the effect the current trends in climate change can have on the target population. As one of the nine students chosen from her college to pursue the Millennium Fellowship in
2021, hosted by MCN and United Nations Academic Impact, she undertook a project on financial literacy to demystify personal banking and finance for college students in Chennai.

Ritheka has worked as a Senior Research Associate with The Parley Project, a youth-led organisation called where she has spearheaded the Prep with Parley Initiative that aims to improve students’ access to information related to graduate admissions process. She is currently a mentor at Project EduAccess, a non-profit initiative that aims to improve access to higher education for learners from marginalised communities in South Asia. Working with Bhumi, she volunteered as a mentor to engage students creatively and teach them about preserving the environment.

As a first generation student, she is deeply grateful for the support offered by the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development (OICSD). Here, she aims to refine her research and work closely with the other scholars.

Through her academic and research activities, Kankana questions the central role that conjugality has historically played in determining women’s social position and reception.

Kankana has always been moved by the gross deprivations meted out to single women, especially widows. Through her stint at Oxford, she intends to sharpen her critical understanding of the heteropatriarchal gender norms in order to address how or whether singlehood affects women’s access to developmental resources in the regime of governmentality, especially in the postcolonial condition.

Kankana gained her bachelor’s degree in 2020 from the Department of English, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. She is looking forward to receiving her master’s degree from the same department in 2022. As a student of Modern South Asian Studies at Oxford, she would like to complement her training in deciphering literary texts with some training in social research and an understanding of contemporary South Asia. She has been interested in studies on the long nineteenth century, life histories, postcolonial theory and literature, gender studies and translation and strongly believes that her regular participation in academic discussions in the areas of her interest has enhanced her critical and analytical skills and ability to think beyond disciplinary boundaries.

Medha currently examines the intersections of politics, public policy, governance and finance in the delivery of essential services, such as safe drinking water to every household in rural India. Focusing on inequalities and intersectionality, she is interested in how inclusive and sustainable outcomes can be reached through national, state and individual choices. Gathering extensive and in-depth empirical evidence is a critical component of her work. She grounds her academic research in the lived experiences and narratives of communities, government decision-makers, political leaders and anyone in between. In 2023, she became the first Indian woman to receive the Frederick Soddy Postgraduate Award from the Royal Geographical Society – Institute of British Geographers.

Growing up in India, Medha has been sensitized to the juxtaposition of excess and inadequacy, in both rural and urban settings. Travelling across India’s diverse landscape, particularly the Himalaya, has shaped her perception of the delicate balance that exists between humans and the natural world. Her study of the Ethics and the Classics, as an English Literature undergraduate, has been pivotal in informing her research interests. Her five-year background as a writer in the film industry, especially for documentaries, contributes to her diverse methods which include photo-documentation, semi-structured interviews, surveys, multi-sited ethnography and archival research. She remains a strong advocate of transcending disciplinary boundaries, and is happy to engage in any discussion, academic and beyond, to further inclusivity.

Previous Qualifications

• Master of Science in Water Science, Policy and Management (with Distinction), University of Oxford, UK
• Bachelor of Arts (with First Class Honours) in English Literature, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India

Previous Scholarship

• Felix Scholarship for MSc in Water Science, Policy and Management, University of Oxford, 2020-2021

Grants and Awards

• Travel and Special Project Grant awarded by Somerville College, University of Oxford, 2024
• Scholar Development Award from the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development, 2023
• Frederick Soddy Postgraduate Award from the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers, 2023
• Catherine Hughes Grant awarded by Somerville College, University of Oxford, 2022

Publications

Peer-Reviewed Research Article

• Mukherjee, M. (2023) Power, paralysis and action: understanding flood risk management in Kerala, India. Environmental Hazards. pp. 1-32.

Working Paper

• Hope, R., McNicholl, D., Mukherjee, M. and Dickinson, N. (2023) Keeping piped water flowing in rural India. Uptime Global and Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford.”

Hi there! I’m Callum and I am currently reading for the MSc in Mathematical Sciences. Originally from Greater Manchester, I am a big Oldham Athletic supporter. You can probably tell that I enjoy football, but I also spend a lot of time reading and going to the gym. I believe sport is a great way to keep fit whilst building social connections and having fun! My aim as MCR Sports Rep is to make this as easy as possible for everyone to get involved.

Please do feel free to contact me for anything regarding sports/physical activities.

Hello! I’m Bethan, the 2024/25 House Chair for Somerville MCR.

I’m an Experimental Psychology DPhil student, working in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. My research aims to explore differences in neural recruitment for executive function and mathematics by children from diverse socio-cultural contexts, and how protective factors support development.

As House Chair, I will be overseeing our physical MCR spaces here at Somerville. If you have any thoughts on what you would like to see in our MCR, please get in touch!

Jim Harris is the Teaching Curator at the Ashmolean Museum, and an art historian specialising in late-medieval and early-Renaissance sculpture.

At the Ashmolean, he is responsible for exploring the use of the Museum’s collections in the university curriculum, devising and delivering classes and courses across a wide range of disciplines and training faculty and early-career researchers to deploy objects and images in developing their own teaching practice.

He has been an Academic Visitor at Somerville since 2017 and a member of the Somerville Medieval Research Group, building a number of long-standing teaching partnerships with members of the college.  He has taught the college’s English undergraduates alongside Dr Annie Sutherland every year since 2012.

Jim trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and later, after over a decade in theatre and television, as an art historian at the Courtauld Institute. He wrote his PhD thesis on the polychrome sculpture of Donatello, and held the Courtauld’s Andrew W Mellon Research Forum Postdoctoral Fellowship and the Caroline Villers Research Fellowship in Conservation before coming to Oxford.

“My research has been focused on the materials and techniques of sculpture, and especially in the question of how three-dimensional surfaces are transformed by polychromy, the addition of paint, gold and inlays, and by the subsequent, successive alterations, deliberate or by chance, that they undergo during their lifetimes.

Dr Pelagia Goulimari is the Co-Director of the MSt in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Co-Director of Intersectional Humanities at The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), and a Senior Fellow in Feminist Studies.

Her research interests include fiction and non-fictional prose in English (1790-present); women’s writing; literary theory and criticism; the modern and the postmodern. She teaches on Literature in English from 1740 to present day; Introduction to Literary Studies; women’s writing; literary theory and criticism; and feminist writing and theory.

She is also the founder and General Editor of Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, published by Routledge. Established in 1993, Angelaki is an international journal in literary and cultural theory and Continental philosophy published by Routledge, Taylor & Francis. The journal publishes four themed and two open, ‘General’, issue per volume. Angelaki is one of the most accessed of Routledge’s 200+ arts and humanities journals (c. 100,000 full-text downloads and c. 2,500 libraries in 2021). Included in the Arts and Humanities Citation Index, it is ranked A* in the literature category in the European Reference Index for Humanities of the European Science Foundation. In 1996, it was awarded ‘Best New Journal’ by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. It has published over 1000 articles, including work by: Alain Badiou, Jean Baudrillard, Andrew Benjamin, Homi K. Bhabha, Leslie Anne Boldt-Irons, Alain Caillé, Barbara Cassin, Howard Caygill, Monique David-Menard, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Costas Douzinas, Alexander García Düttmann, Michèle Le Doeuff, Mike Gane, Lawrence Grossberg, Félix Guattari, Donna Haraway, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Ihab Hassan, Leslie Hill, Peggy Kamuf, John Kinsella, Friedrich Kittler, Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, Douglas Kellner, Jacques Lacan, Ernesto Laclau, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy, John O’Neill, Jacques Rancière, Nicholas Rand, Bill Readings, Leonard Rosmarin, Nicholas Royle, Stella Sandford, Michel Serres, Paul Virilio, Robyn Wiegman, Robert Young, Slavoj Žižek.

Judith Unwin read Philosophy Politics & Economics at Somerville College and subsequently spent 35+ years in international banking in the City.

She initially joined the merchant bank Lazard Brothers & Co., Limited as their first female graduate trainee and worked in the Bank’s International Division arranging financing for infrastructure projects in a range of overseas markets. Having first visited India in 1984 she has been a regular and frequent visitor ever since. 

After 10 years at Lazard Judith joined ANZ Grindlays Bank in London specialising in South Asia, particularly India. She was appointed to various UK Government advisory positions including the South Asia Advisory Group under the auspices of the then Department of Trade & Industry and participated in many Ministerial Trade Missions to India. 

From 2000 she held a number of senior roles at BNP Paribas London the last being head of a team working with the international Development Finance Institutions and Multilateral Agencies. She was a founding member of the Indo British Partnership and subsequently Director and Chair of the Nominations Committee of the UK India Business Council (2008-2014). She took a sabbatical from the Bank in 2006 to travel to rural India researching and working with women’s self help groups and microfinance schemes and has supported several Indian charities. 

In parallel with her professional career, Judith has held a number of Non Executive Director and pro bono trustee roles. 

She retired from banking in 2016 and is currently the Vice Chair of The Prison Phoenix Trust and a trustee of Music at Oxford. She was Chair of Contemporary Applied Arts until her retirement from the role in 2022.

Judith was awarded an OBE in 2000 for Services to Export promotion to South Asia.

Gillian Clark is Professor Emerita (since 2010) of Ancient History at the University of Bristol. She read Greats (Greek and Latin language and literature, ancient history, and philosophy) at Somerville, and also took her MA and DPhil here.

After Oxford, Professor Clark taught at the universities of Glasgow, St Andrews, and Manchester before her appointment to Liverpool and then to Bristol. Her research field is known to classicists as late antiquity and to theologians as early Christian studies or patristics. She works on social and intellectual history, with a special interest in the lives of women. Her continuing project is a commentary on Augustine, City of God.

Professor Clark also co-edits, with Andrew Louth FBA, the monograph series Oxford Early Christian Texts / Studies (OUP), and she is a General Editor of the series Translated Texts for Historians 300-800 (Liverpool University Press), which provides scholarly annotated translations from the languages of the Roman empire and its neighbours and successors.

Research Interests

Lisa is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Somerville College and in the Faculty of Law, leading the project ‘Changing One’s Mind: Neurointerventions, Autonomy, and the Law on Consent’, which examines the extent to which English law on consent sufficiently protects morally salient patient interests. 

Her main research interests are in normative and practical ethics, and in the philosophy of medical and criminal law. Prior to taking up the British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, Lisa was a Research Associate on the Mental Health and Justice project at the University of York, a Postdoctoral Fellow in Ethics at the Rotman Institute of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy, University of Western Ontario and, before that, she worked on the project ‘Neurointerventions in Crime-Prevention: An Ethical Analysis’ in the Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford. Lisa holds a PhD in philosophy and law and an MA in ethics and medical law from King’s College London and a BA in philosophy from Stockholm University. Her doctoral thesis was on the justification for the lawfulness of medical interventions.

Safa Fanaian’s DPhil research focuses on the understanding and mapping governance of water-related risks faced by growing riverine cities in the global south, and specifically those in the intermediate category (<1million population). The case of Guwahati and its rivers are explored, as it is a second tier city in India and an emblem of urbanisation on the Brahmaputra River. Particular focus is given to the risks of inadequate water supply issues, river pollution, and urban floods.

Safa is currently an Oxford-Indira Gandhi Scholar at the Oxford-India Centre for Sustainable Development, Somerville College. She is also the recipient of a National Geographic Explorer grant.

Prior to her DPhil, Safa worked for more than seven years with various development agencies to improve water security in South Asia. She has an MSc in Water Management from IHE-Delft, Institute for Water Education, Netherlands and an MSc in Ecology and Environmental Science from Pondicherry University, India.

‘I want to develop a greater understanding of the interrelationship between law and the social embeddedness of energy transition in India. By viewing energy transition through the brackets of law we see a powerful story of how it stimulates social justice. Transition creates access to electricity, improves standards of living and stimulates sustainable development’

Navya Jannu is a Doctor of Philosophy candidate at the University of Oxford. She is an Indira Gandhi scholar at the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development at Somerville College and the Convenor of the Environmental Law Discussion Group at the Oxford Law Faculty.

Navya’s research focuses on law, climate change and clean energy infrastructure in India. Through her doctoral research, Navya explores the role of lower courts and tribunals in India’s transition to renewable energy. In particular, she studies the role of the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (APTEL) and National Green Tribunal (NGT) in this process. Prior to the DPhil, Navya read for an MPhil in Law in 2018 and completed the Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) with Distinction in 2017 at the University of Oxford as an HSA Advocates Scholar. She holds a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws with First Class Honours from Jindal Global Law School (JGLS), India.

Awards and Previous Qualifications:

• Oxford- MPhil in Law (2018)
• Oxford Law Faculty Scholarship (2017)
• Oxford- Bachelor of Civil Law (Distinction) (2017)
• HSA Advocates Scholarship (2016)
• Archibald Jackson Prize for Distinction on BCL (2017)
• JGLS- B.A., LL.B (Hons) (Distinction) (2016)
• University Gold Medal for Outstanding Academic Performance and All-Round Excellence (JGLS, 2016)

My DPhil in Plant Sciences, under the guidance of Professor (Dr.) Renier van der Hoorn, aims to understand the evolution of mechanism of extracellular perception of pathogens in the Solanaceae plant family, including important crops such as, tomato and potato.

Subsequent to perception, plants actively resist infection by most pathogens via deployment of multiple defense pathways. Since plant pathogens pose a huge challenge to crop production, enhanced understanding of how plant disease resistance is achieved will open novel avenues for plant protection methods. This eventually holds the potential of simultaneously addressing the many crises related to agriculture, including, global food security.

I am truly grateful to have received an IGS award, and I hope that OICSD, through inter-disciplinary collaborations, will provide necessary support to translate my research findings into effective solutions to crop losses.

Prior to Oxford, I attended the University of Delhi for my B.Sc. degree in life sciences and M.Sc. in Botany. During my post-graduation, I spent a summer at the Institute of Life Sciences, Odisha, as an Indian Academy of Sciences’ Research Fellow. Over the last few years, I have worked with various Non-governmental organizations in India, working on education and agriculture-related concerns.

My research interests pertain to public international law and climate change. I seek to study the impact of rising sea levels on international maritime boundaries and maritime entitlements, to better understand how the law on this subject may be developed to accommodate such change.

My attraction to the law stems from the pivotal role it plays in shaping society. It is for this reason that I have nurtured a deep interest in public international law. I believe it possesses tremendous potential to change the lives of the most vulnerable, and mold society for the better.

During my undergraduate studies at the National Law School I pursued every opportunity to further my passion for international law. I was fortunate to argue the finals of the ICC moot before sitting judges of the International Criminal Court, at The Hague. I worked extensively on the law of statehood whilst competing at the Jessup Moot. Through my internship with Mr. Soli Sorabjee, I worked on a major international maritime dispute, the Enrica Lexie case.

The Rhodes Scholarship enabled me to read for the Bachelor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford, where I engaged more deeply with the subject through courses such as International Law and Armed Conflict as well as International Law of the Sea. I added breadth to this engagement in my second year at Oxford where I read for an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, gaining a better understanding of the real-world hurdles that reside in the practice of international law.

I hope to nurture this passion further, as an Indira Gandhi Scholar at the Oxford India Centre, whilst reading for my DPhil in Law at Somerville.

Awards and Previous Qualifications

• Oxford – MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (Distinction)
• Oxford – Bachelor of Civil Law (Distinction)
• NLSIU – B.A., LL.B. (H)
• Rhodes Scholar (India & Exeter, 2017)
• Oxford Department of International Development Faculty Prize for Best Thesis in the MSc (RFMS) [2019]
• Volterra Fietta Prize for International Law of the Sea (BCL) [2018]
• Gold Medal for Best Student Advocate [2017]

My research interests are in financial inclusion and sustainable agricultural development. I seek to understand the constraints that hinder the adoption and effective usage of savings and loans amongst smallholder farmers in developing economies.

My academic training is shaped by a Masters in Economics, Delhi School of Economics and a Masters in Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley. Keen to work on the intersectionality of sustainable development and finance, I focus on applied econometrics and development economics.

My tenure at Goldman Sachs cultivated my interest in financial markets, and also motivated me to apply my skills to the developing country context where issues of credit constraints, barriers to savings and missing insurance markets are very pertinent.

My experiences led me to appreciate that development policies do not operate in a vacuum but are fundamentally dependent on the social and institutional contexts in which they are devised. I received the Global Development Fellowship from USAID to undertake research on the “Enterprise Development Program” run by SaveAct in South Africa. I have experience as a researcher in the Economics department at U.C. Berkeley, working on randomized control trials in Kenyan maize markets. As a Project Manager at the Center for Effective Global Action, I worked with USAID in Uganda to design sustainable policies for solar waste management.

Academic Publications

Enterprise Development: A Deeper Understanding – Spring edition, 2018 of the Berkeley Public Policy Journal

Winner of the PBPPJ Prize for Outstanding Editorial Collaboration

I am interested in the application of insights from behavioural economics to policy-making. My doctoral research at the Blavatnik School of Government seeks to focus on biases in information processing and belief updating in the context of the spread of health-related misinformation in India. Ultimately, my goal is to help governments develop effective policy solutions, which are grounded in theory and supported by evidence.

Prior to starting at Blavatnik, I worked as a Research Assistant to Professor Sir Julian Le Grand at the Marshall Institute, London School of Economics. In this role, I drew upon economic and psychological theory to study and model altruistic behaviour and conducted empirical research to understand the factors underlying ethical consumption choices. My experience of working in the social development sector, at Becoming I Foundation cultivated my interest in policy research. In collaboration with Teach for India, I worked to bring reforms in education for low-income groups in New Delhi and engaged directly with the beneficiaries, which helped me see how policies affect people on the ground.

I received my undergraduate training in economics from Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi and a Master of Sciences in management and strategy from the London School of Economics and Political Sciences. My master’s thesis focussed on discouraging consumption of single-use plastic bags while grocery shopping online and studied the effects of behavioural interventions on fostering a commitment to reuse carry bags. The paper is now published in the journal Behavioural Public Policy (2020).

I am the Lord and Lady McNair Early Career Fellow in Law at Somerville College, teaching Criminal Law and Constitutional Law. My doctoral research, supervised by Professor Laura Hoyano and funded by the Gopal Subramaniam OICSD scholarship, examined how rape adjudication takes place in India.

Prior to taking up doctoral studies, I read on the Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) programme and the MPhil in Law at Oxford as a Cornelia Sorabji Scholar. I also hold a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree from the National Law University, Delhi (India).

Awards and Previous Qualifications

• BA, LLB (Hons), National Law University Delhi (July 2017)
• Bachelor of Civil Law, University of Oxford (July 2018)
• Master of Philosophy in Law, University of Oxford (October 2019)
• Awarded Archibald Jackson Prize for securing a Distinction on the BCL
• Awarded Suresh Shroff Gold Medal for First Rank Holder of Batch of 2012-17, National Law University, Delhi.
• Recipient of Cornelia Sorabji Scholarship by Somerville College, University of Oxford and Goa Education Trust (British Council) Scholarship to pursue Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) at University of Oxford for the year 2017-18.
• Recipient of Somerville College Alumni Scholarship and scholarship by Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development (OICSD) to pursue MPhil (Law) at University of Oxford for the year 2018-19.
• Recipient of Gopal Subramanium Scholarship by OICSD Somerville College to pursue DPhil (Law) at University of Oxford starting October 2019.
• Awarded Modern Law Review Scholarship 2021.
• Awarded Mike Redmayne Award for research into Criminal Law and the Law of Evidence (MLR) 2022.
• Awarded Best Doctoral Student Prize at the Society of Legal Scholars’ Annual Conference 2023.

I completed the B.A.LL.B. (Hons) Course at NALSAR University of Law in 2021, and have remained at the top of my class for five years. During the BCL, I hope to study private international law with an emphasis on dispute resolution. I am particularly excited to be able to explore the intersection of this field with public policy.  

I have been interested in dispute resolution mechanisms ever since I was introduced to them in my first year of law school. While pursuing this interest through various avenues, I witnessed the influence of gender and race on seemingly neutral standards. This has motivated me to analyse private law structures through an interdisciplinary and critical lens.

I have attempted to evaluate the relationship between dispute resolution and policy through various publications. Recently, I co-authored a book chapter analysing the impact of investment arbitration costs on the pursuit of justice. Due to my manifest inclination towards this subject, I was nominated by the Telangana government to attend a conference in the Hague where I worked with policy students on developing fair responses to cyber-conflicts. Currently, I am serving as the executive-secretary for an international task-force that seeks to expand arbitration norms to meet the representative and decentralised conception of justice held by the global technology sector. These experiences have solidified my interest in building a career in dispute resolution, and contributing to both academic literature and ongoing efforts seeking to make the field more equitable.

The BCL will empower me to pursue this interest to the fullest extent by allowing me to create a unique curriculum out of various specialised course options. I feel privileged to be able to spend this year at Somerville College, and hope to learn from its inspiring history of advocating for equality. I would like to express my gratitude to HSA Advocates and the OICSD for selecting me to be this year’s HSA Advocates Scholar and thereby enabling me to strive towards my objectives.