Biography

Diksha is interested in and researches the legal regulation of non-normative intimacies, families, care, and vulnerability in India. Her work aims to understand and clarify the relationship between law and social change through the lens of queer, feminist and post-colonial social movements. 

She is currently pursuing her PhD at the Faculty of Laws, University College London (UCL) where her research focuses on how law engages with intimate relationships and family formations—particularly queer and non-normative ways of ‘doing’ family—and how these are regulated through legal and quasi-legal means.

Her PhD thesis, supported by UCL, examines the use of quasi-legal instruments such as live-in relationship agreements and friendship agreements as tools for navigating non-marital relationships in India, and traces their evolution as emerging legal practices.

She holds a B.A. LL.B. from the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), Kolkata (2016), and an LLM in Human Rights, Conflict and Justice from SOAS, University of London, where she was a Felix Scholar. Prior to joining JGLS, she worked at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy as a JALDI (Justice, Access and Lowering Delays in India) Fellow. There, her research included examining the lack of diversity in the lower judiciary. She was also part of the Queering the Law project, which explored how Indian laws could be made more inclusive of LGBTQ+ communities.