The importance of developing and reflecting on humanistic perspectives on legal practice and legal pedagogy has acquired a specific kind of urgency in contemporary iterations of legal questions in India today. It has become imperative to recover, highlight, and underline the quest of law towards humanity to interrogate the normalization of law’s attachment to cruelty. The Centre for Law and Humanities aims to consolidate the prolific histories, traditions, and forms of life and thought that challenges the idea that law as language must serve as hollow instrument of power. By pointing to the relationship between law and/or in humanities, it strives to recover a sensibility that is literary, lyrical, poetic, sensory, and aesthetic to invite self-reflexivity at the heart of the legal enterprise. To the project of constitutional law or human rights law, the very idea of the human (or the post-human) and humanity must take centre stage. And such projects then must cultivate forms of sensibilities that enable legal experts, academics and students to see and feel (or sense) how lives that stand or fall in the shadow of the law are made illegible. Such forms of seeing and sensing are framed through artistic, cinematic, poetic, literary or sensory ways. The symbolic forms of law or the structure of feelings that are embedded in legal architecture as a given must be unpacked from a postcolonial reading of our own literary, cinematic, poetic, artistic and sensory traditions.
The Centre for Law and Humanities strives to promote reflections on the intersections between law and the humanities by initiating interdisciplinary conversations on how we may think of law in humanities, law and humanities, and law as humanities. The Centre provides a forum to scholars from diverse intellectual traditions and disciplinary perspectives to converse and dialogue on how to deepen laws quest for humanity. The Centre seeks to elicit newer ways of framing law’s vexed relationship with caste, gender, politics, identity, morality, art and justice. It strives to invite conversations about the cultural lives of law by addressing both state law and non-state law. Towards this goal, the Centre regularly organises individual and collaborative research projects, conferences and scholarly symposia, public and distinguished lectures and exhibitions.
Some of the other specific objectives of the Centre include:
Dhanishtha Arora, BA LLB (2021-2026), JGLS
This piece is drawn keeping in mind that all people, irrespective of their different nationalities, class, gender, religion, economic status, age, disabilities/special abilities, choices of clothing, etc. should be granted a similar set of privileges, giving respect to the diversity and at the same time creating an inclusive international society that respects the most intrinsic and core human values.
Reema Nayak, BBA LLB (2021-2026), JGLS
I have drawn several symbols to denote the various fields of humanities (anthropology, law, politics, archaeology, history, literature, linguistic and language, performing arts, visual arts, philosophy, gender) resting upon the international symbol of justice, perfectly balanced, representing how co-dependent law and humanities are on each other, and how the disregard of one would make the other imbalanced.
Maria Philip Mampilly, BA LLB (2022-2027), JGLS
The artwork shows that absolute justice is abstract and imaginary, it shows that justice an unachievable faraway dream for the oppressed and poor ( depicted in green) and justice tilts towards money, power, and authority ( depicted in red) and how recklessly the powerful and the rich are holding it and playing with it.
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The Centre for Law and Humanities collaborated with The Centre for Human Rights Studies to organise a photography exhibition, Rights and Duties: A Visual Journey on 22 November 2024.
The camera is more than an artistic tool—it has long served as a powerful medium for documenting socio-political milestones and capturing the emotions of citizens as they engage with their constitutional rights and duties. This exhibition presents a curated selection of photographs and visual essays to foster meaningful conversations among artists, practitioners, and academics, setting the stage for Constitution Day. Through this photo exhibit, we celebrate the vibrant and evolving nature of rights and duties under the Indian Constitution. The collection offers a glimpse into its illustrious history and contemporary discussions surrounding its growth and significance.
Art exhibition
Curated by CLH Fellows Hamsini Marada & Soumya Singh Chouhan on 4 May 2023.
Theme: “Sounds and Silences of Law in Art.”
The curated artworks showcased myriad intersections of art and law. The idea behind the exhibition was to explore the unique nature of art as a legal object/subject with the aim of understanding how art is constructed as well as contested in legal theory and regulation.
CAARNet (Care & Ageing in Asia Research Network) is an interdisciplinary research platform that brings cutting-edge scholarship into conversation with real-world social and policy challenges. It seeks to move beyond narrow, technocratic, or purely demographic approaches by foregrounding the lived realities of ageing, the political economy of care, and the uneven social, legal, and ethical structures that shape later life. Committed to creativity, collaboration, and critical inquiry, CAARNet offers a dynamic space for scholars, care practitioners, activists and policymakers to explore questions of ageing in later life, care, and social justice, with particular focus on South Asian, Southeast Asian, and East Asian societies. We inaugurated CAARNet on 6 September 2025. Anchored at the Centre for Law & Humanities at the Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University, CAARNet invites new and diverse voices to join the conversation and shape the future directions of this growing field. The anchor of this network is Dr. Deblina Dey, who has collaborated with faculty members from the Jindal School of Liberal Arts and the Jindal School of Public Health and Human Development on various academic projects.
To know more about CAARNet’s activities, please click on the following links:
CAARNet Website: https://sites.google.com/view/caarnet
Photo Journal: https://youtu.be/OQTq9OJnvLQ
Blog: https://sites.google.com/view/caarnet/blog-write-for-us
1. Collaborations for webinars:
CLH has collaborated with LASSnet (Law and Social Sciences Research Network) anchored at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and Centre for Law in Asia at SOAS, London, since 2021.
LASSnet is a research network which brings together scholars, lawyers and doctoral researchers engaged in research and teaching of issues of law in different social sciences in contemporary South Asian contexts. It promotes the exchange of ideas, work, materials, pedagogies and aspirations for the way law, regulation and society as objects of research, as well as sites of praxis, have been envisaged variously. The significance of our collaboration with LASSnet and CALS, SOAS is to further our objective of nurturing interdisciplinary conversations about law and/in society. The speakers are from different continents researching on themes that dislodge the doctrinal value of law and reveal the kaleidoscopic gaze(s) on/of law. We organised 19 webinars (panel discussions, lectures and book talks) between 2021 and 2023. The flyers for all the webinars are available in the “Events” section.
2. Internship Opportunities
From time to time, we have recruited interns from the law school to work with us.
Three interns worked on different projects during the summer break (June & July 2023). Two of them conducted field visits and prepared reports and photo essays.
Dhanishtha Arora, a third-year BA LLB student, assisted in compiling audio-visual data and has prepared a photo essay on the MGNREGA protests in Delhi’s Jantar Mantar.
Vanya Duggal, a first-year BBA LLB student, has prepared a report “Shifting Perspectives: Assisted Living Facilities and Old Age Homes,” based on their fieldwork at an assisted-living facility for senior citizens in Gurgaon. She published a part of her work in the CAARNet blog, “Caring Differently: The Rise of Assisted Living in India.”
Aarushi Nandi, a second-year BA LLB student, prepared a photo essay based on her fieldwork in Kolkata on the artisans of Kumartuli. Her project is titled “Kumortuli: Understanding The Mortal Lives of The Makers of The Immortal.”
Mani Shekhar Singh
Director
Mani Shekhar Singh is Professor and Executive Director of the Centre for Law and Humanities at the Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University, India. Trained in sociology at the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, he has worked on folk art and popular visual culture, with a longstanding ethnographic focus on Mithila painting. He has been awarded several fellowships, including the Postdoctoral Rockefeller Fellowship, Johns Hopkins University; Visiting Fellow, IGK Arbeit und Lebenslauf in globalgeschichtlicher Perspective, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Directeur d’Études Associé ; The Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, Visiting Fellow; The Käte Hamburger Kolleg “Recht als Kultur,” Internationales Kolleg für Geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung; and the New India Foundation. He has published in several edited volumes, museum catalogues and journals, including Contributions to Indian Sociology, Indian Folklife, Indian Horizons, Economic and Political Weekly, and Domains. His research interests include visual anthropology, folk and creative expressions, and law, art and aesthetics.
Deblina Dey
Assistant Director
Deblina Dey is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Jindal Global Law School, O.P Jindal Global University. She earned her PhD from the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her doctoral and postdoctoral work takes an interdisciplinary approach to examining care, law, and inequality, with a particular focus on older populations in India. She has received several international fellowships and postdoctoral research grants, including the Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (New York-based) in 2023, the Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Fellowship to pursue research in Chicago in 2024, and an International Visiting Fellowship at the University of Liverpool.
Her publications explore a range of topics, including dispute resolution mechanisms for older adults, custodial neglect among older political prisoners, the intersections of religion and elder abuse, and filial piety laws in India and China. Some of her publications can be viewed at: https://jgu.academia.edu/DeblinaDey. Her broader research interests include sociology of law, medical anthropology, with attention to pharmaceuticalisation of care, medical harm, and end-of-life care, custodial institutions such as prisons and care homes, family and kinship studies, and the sociology of markets. Driven by her interests in critical gerontology along with a public sociology approach, in September 2025, she founded the Care & Ageing in Asia Research Network (CAARNet). CAARNet is an initiative that brings together scholars, practitioners, and professionals to engage in dialogue on eldercare practices and the future(s) of ageing.
Tripti Bhushan
Fellow
Tripti Bhushan is currently serving as an Assistant Professor at Jindal Global Law School and is a Fellow at the Centre for Law and Humanities (CLH). She holds an LLM in Intellectual Property Rights from Hidayatullah National Law University ,Raipur. and a B.A.LLB (H) from Amity Law School, Lucknow. In recognition of her outstanding research and publications, She was awarded the Research Excellence Award by O.P Jindal Global University in 2021 and she has been awarded Best External Paper award by Kent Law School UK in 2021 in an annual conference. Prior to her current role, she worked as an Assistant Professor at Kalinga University, Raipur. Tripti has numerous SCOPUS Publications in esteemed journals such as Economic and Political Weekly, International Journal of Public Law and Policy, NTUT Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Management, and Oxford Human Rights Hub, Indonesian Journal of International Law, Journal of Intellectual Property Right( JIPR) . Her research interests encompass Fashion Law, Contracts Law , Intellectual Property Rights, Cyber law & Technology, Entertainment and Media laws. She has presented her paper in 9th Biennial International Law Conference in Person held at Bandung, Indonesia in August 2023 etc.
Hamsini Marada
Fellow
Hamsini is broadly oriented towards socio-legal studies with an emphasis on comparative constitutional law, aesthetics, and criminal law. In this realm, she is particularly interested in the intersection of art, law, culture and politics. As someone who is passionate about painting and photography, her current work pertains to the protection of rights of artists and their artworks. Through her research, she is also working on developing creative strategies to increase access to law through art in India and South Asia by works of art in the nature of street art, graffiti writing, protest art and artworks in digital spaces. Hamsini also teaches an elective titled Sounds and Silences of Law in Art: Identity, Access and Activism. She is currently engaged in developing an art portfolio intended to be a compilation of personal projects and other work interests.
Suprita Acharya
Fellow
Suprita is interested in examining what is watching us. To be more concrete, she is interested in researching about surveillance technologies through a socio-legal lens. Her research area also seeps into Intellectual Property Rights, especially copyright laws. She has received her LLM from the University of Maryland, Baltimore and completed her undergraduate degree from KIIT University, Bhubaneswar.
Heysha Zaveri
Research Assistant
Heysha Vikas Zaveri is currently an undergraduate law student pursuing an integrated BBA LLB Degree at the Jindal Global Law School. She believes that societal issues, such as those affecting marginalized communities, are omnipresent, and the center recognizes them in a society that often considers these issues invisible. Her current areas of interest include, among others, reading about the disturbances to refugees, environmental law, humanitarian law, and the intersection of these topics today.
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We welcome collaborations and presentation of research work from persons and organisations with expertise in the field of Law and the Humanities. Please write to us at clh@jgu.edu.in if you are interested.
![11 March 2022|Book Discussion :Vernacular Rights Cultures: The Politics of Origins, Human Rights, And Gendered Struggles For Justice [ LASSnet Webinar Series 2022]](https://jgu.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/jgls/IMG_20220311_084038.jpg){kind=link}