Teesta Sengupta

As a doctoral researcher in the department of Anthropology and Sociology, Teesta’s research is situated at the intersections of the broader fields of both anthropology of stratification and law and legal processes.   In this research, she ethnographically maps the interactions between different systems of stratification, oppression and their role in both the occurrence of sex crimes as a widespread phenomena and their redressal process across social and legal judicial arenas. As a part of this research that is anchored in a Northern Indian context with specific emphasis on the National Capital she has engaged in extensive fieldwork in the form of court ethnographies in the district courts of Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh across a period of twelve months amidst her employment of other methodologies in diverse civil society spaces for anthropologically tracing and often debunking the social life of both incidents of sex crimes and it’s related law and legal redressal processes.   Prior to joining SOAS, Teesta has completed her Masters from the department of Sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi in 2019.   Her previous research titled “Patriarchal Slippages in Law: Decoding ACTS of Domestic Violence and (Marital) Rape” that studies the engagement of the heteronormative ideologies of gender with codification and implementation of two  specific ACTS in Indian judiciary for crimes against women and the effect of such engagement on the nature of justice served in such cases also mirrors her continued research interests in the area of stratification and law.

Anthropology of Stratification, Anthropology of Law and Legal Processes, Socio-Legal Studies, Anthropology of Policing, Anthropology of Violence, Feminist Theory, Indian Sociology.