School of Law
Research Seminar Series
SOAS South Asia Institute
Academic Staff, SOAS South Asia Institute
Centre for Asian Legal Studies
Chair
- Name:
- Dr Kanika Sharma
- Email address:
- ks72@soas.ac.uk
- Telephone:
- +44 (0) 20 7898 4657
- Building:
- Paul Webley Wing (Senate House)
- Office No:
- S339
- Academic Support Hours:
- Tuesday 14.00-15.00 & Wednesdays 11:30 - 12:30
Biography
I joined SOAS after obtaining my PhD from Birkbeck College, University of London in 2016. In my thesis I used postcolonial and constitutional theories to examine the use of images and architecture in political trials. I also used psychoanalytic jurisprudence to analyse the relation between law and culture and the formation of the legal subject in colonial and post-colonial contexts.
Prior to starting my PhD in Law, I studied journalism and politics in New Delhi and worked in various capacities including as a reporter and photographer for a national daily, as a military historian and as a researcher for UNICEF.
My current research focuses on Indian colonial legal history, and I am presently working on two themes. Firstly, I am studying notions of female ‘consent’ in the age of consent debates in India from the late nineteenth century with a special emphasis on the renowned trial of Rukhmabai (1885). Secondly, I am looking at the ways in which law is performed and history is staged in relation to political trials. Towards this end, I am also working with a theatre director to dramatize the trial of the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar.
At SOAS I co-convene Legal Systems of Asia and Africa and Law and Society in South Asia and teach on the Public Law module. I am also the Chair of the Centre for Asian Legal Studies.