Dr. Debolina Dutta
Assistant Professor
B.A., English Literature (Presidency College, University of Calcutta) ;
LL.B. (Bharti Vidyapeeth University, Pune);
M.Phil. (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata)'
Ph.D. (Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne)
Biography
Biography
Dr. Debolina Dutta holds academic degrees in law, literature and cultural studies. Her research is located at the intersections of jurisprudence, postcolonial theory, law and the humanities, sexuality studies, socio-legal studies, and feminist ethics. Debolina was Residential Fellow at the Institute for Global Law and Policy, Harvard Law School (2021-2022) and Visiting Fellow at the Institute for International Law and the Humanities, Melbourne Law School (2020-2021).
As a feminist, researcher and activist Debolina has had a long-standing relationship with the sex workers’ movement in India. She has worked as a sexual rights advocate both nationally and internationally, including at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. Previously, she was advocacy and research officer at CREA, New Delhi.
Her writings have appeared/ is forthcoming in the Australian Feminist Law Journal, Childhood, Feminist Studies, International Journal of Law in Context, Global Public Health, Routledge Handbook on the Politics of Global Health, Routledge Handbook on International Law and the Humanities, Research Handbook on Law and Literature, Palgrave Handbook of Gender and Development, among others. She received the Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship on Gender and Human Rights in 2017. Her co-directed documentary film We Are Foot Soldiers, on the collectivization of children of sex workers in Sonagachi, Kolkata, received the 3rd prize at Jeevika: Asia Livelihood Documentary Competition in 2012.
Debolina recently co-edited a special issue of Global Public Health themed “(Re)imagining Research, Activism and Rights at the Intersections of Sexuality, Health, and Social Justice”. She sits on the editorial boards of the journals Law and Literature and Social and Legal Studies.
Her current projects include the publications of a monograph titled Doing Feminist Jurisprudence, which is an empirical study of the diverse forms and practices of feminist jurisprudential conversations in India; and a collaborative, illustrated book titled The Rule of Laughter, which portrays how sex workers use fun and laughter in the everyday business of sex to refuse the criminalization of their lives and livelihood in India.
Alongside her academic research, Debolina is always passionately looking forward to a bone-chilling, nerve-wracking, mind-boggling crime thriller for relaxation.
Debolina’s published works are available here: https://jgu.academia.edu/DebolinaDutta