Dr. Debolina Dutta

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). She sits on the editorial boards of Australian Feminist Law Journal; Law and Literature and Social and Legal Studies. She is also a member of the regional governing board of Urgent Action Fund (Asia and Pacific). Debolina is on the faculty of the inaugural Academy in Advanced Legal Research and Method of the Transnational Association of Legal Scholars, Laureate Research Programme in Global Corporations and International Law, Melbourne Law School. Her monograph The Practise of Feminist Jurisprudence: Law, Public Life and Conversations in Post-colonial India is forthcoming with the Law in Context series, Cambridge University Press, UK. 

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 in 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.  

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