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 center 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:

• To collaborate with research centres in various universities (both within and outside India), scholars, lawyers, organisations (both not-for-profit and governmental), and policy research institutes to carry out research and publications on the intersection of law, society and humanities.
• To conduct interdisciplinary research and publish findings in reputed national and international journals, books, and widely-read, popular magazines and newspapers.
• To generate awareness about pertinent issues related to law, society and humanities through workshops, exhibitions and other forms of academic engagements.
• To cultivate research interest among students through workshops and seminars. Also, involve them in fieldwork and preparation of research publications.
• To develop pedagogical materials that enhances teaching and learning in the field of law, society and humanities.
• Work towards putting a research proposal for funding to take further collaborative projects on two themes: judiciary iconography and cultural life of law in times of the pandemic .
  
  
  

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 and result in chaos.

Upcoming Events

• Book discussion on ‘Performing Silence: Women in the Group Theatre Movement in
  Bengal.’

Past events

• 6 July 2022|Book Discussion : An Ethnographic Approach to Forensic Medicine in India [ LASSnet Webinar Series 2022]

• 11 April  2022|Guest Lecture : International Law: Impact of Conflict on Cultural Property

• 11 March 2022|Book Discussion :Vernacular Rights Cultures: The Politics of Origins, Human Rights, And Gendered Struggles For Justice [ LASSnet Webinar Series 2022]
• 27 Jan 2022|Panel Discussion : The Cow and the Elephant as “CATTLE ” in Indian Law, Policy and Practice [LASSnet Webinar Series 2022]
• 17 Dec 2021|Book Discussion : From Family to Police Force: Security and Belonging on a South Asian Border [LASSnet Webinar Series 2021]
• 21 Oct 2021|Book Discussion: Naming Violence: Torture and Terrorism in Colonial South Asia [LASSnet Webinar Series 2021]
•  24 Sept 2021|Book Discussion: From the Colonial to the Contemporary: Images, Iconography, Memories, and Performances of Law in India’s High Court[LASSnet Webinar Series 2021]
• 8 July 2021 |Panel Discussion: The Making and Unmaking of Illegality : Ethnographic Commentaries on Scenes of Authoritarian Law [LASSnet Webinar Series 2021]

Mani Shekhar Singh

Director

Mani Shekhar Singh is Professor and the Executive Director of the Centre for Law and Humanities at Jindal Global Law School. He has worked extensively on the pictorial practices of women painters of Mithila (India), which resulted in Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. He has held visiting fellowships at top universities and research institutes in Germany, France and the United States of America. In India, he has been the recipient of the New India Foundation Fellowship and the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts research grant. He has taught at New School for Social Research, New York, and Department of Sociology, University of Delhi. He has published in several edited volumes and journals including Contributions to Indian Sociology (ns), Indian Folklife, Indian Horizons, Economic and Political Weekly, and Domains. His areas of research interest include visual anthropology, folk creative expressions, and law and art. Prof. Singh is currently researching the place of art in the Indian Constitution, online courts, and legal aesthetics in India.

Deblina Dey

Assistant Director

Deblina Dey is Associate Professor of Sociology at Jindal Global Law School. She has received her doctoral degree from Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Dr. Dey has pursued inter-disciplinary research on care, law and inequality with a focus on older people in India. Her doctoral thesis enquires into the changing role of family, state and the market with regard to eldercare in India. She has studied dispute resolution systems vis-à-vis intergenerational conflicts (property disputes) and has also researched on mobile clinics. She has published in edited volumes and journals like Theoretical Inquiries in Law, Journal of Human Values, and Economic and Political Weekly. Her research interests include sociology of law, law and custodial institutions (such as prisons, care institutions), medical anthropology, religion, kinship studies and dissent art. Some of her publications can be viewed at: https://jgu.academia.edu/DeblinaDey. Two of her recent research engagements are politics of bail denial to senior political prisoners in India during the COVID-19 pandemic and the role of dissent art in the context of Palestinian resistance movement.

Soumya Singh Chauhan

Fellow

Soumya is an Assistant Professor at the Jindal Global Law School. Soumya has earned her Masters in Law in ‘Intellectual Property and Policy Law’ from University of Washington School of Law, Seattle, and her B.A.LL.B. [Hons.] from University Institute of Legal Studies, Panjab University. Her work experience includes Trademark Prosecution and Transactions at Ascentialls Law Firm  in New Delhi, Policy work relating to surveillance technology at the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, and Art and Law intersecting practices at the Seattle Art Museum and Tasveer, a non-profit South Asian film organisation that organises the longest South Asian Film Festival in the USA. Soumya’s current research interests lie in these intersections as well, of Technology and Law, and Art and Law, involving the study of IP, Criminal Law, and Constitutional Law.

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.

Tripti Bhushan

Fellow

Tripti Bhushan is serving as Lecturer at Jindal Global Law School & Fellow at Centre for Law & Humanities(CLH).She has completed her LLM in Intellectual Property Rights from Hidayatullah National Law University & B.A.LLB ( H) from Amity Law School, Lucknow. She is also the recipient of Research Excellence Award by O.P Jindal Global University for her excellent contribution in research & publication in year 2021. She is also the Recipient of the International Award as Emerging Scientist in the field of law in the year 2020 for her exceptional contribution in the field of Academia, Madurai. Prior to joining JGLS, She has served as an Assistant Professor at Kalinga University, Raipur. She has various SCOPUS Publications at reputed journals like, Economic and Political weekly, International Journal of Public, Policy & Law , American Journal of political Science and Criminology, NTUT Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Management,Oxford Human Rights Hub. Ms. Tripti has published two books with ISBN No in Intellectual Property Law & Media and International Law in the year 2021. Her Research interest includes Intellectual Property Rights, Human Rights, Cyber law & technology, Criminal law, Media & Fashion.

Achintya Anita Gurumurthy
Research Assistant

Achintya is a law student, who is interested in Marxist and Ambedkarite politics. She is engaged in reading about social movements, and their relationship with the law and state.

Amulya Anita Gurumurthy
Research Assistant

Amulya Anita Gurumurthy is an undergraduate student pursuing a 5 year Integrated Bachelor of B.A. LL.B (Hons) course at OP Jindal Global University. She is interested in unpacking the dialectics between law and social movements and understanding the cross pollination between prevailing configurations of power and judicial pronouncements. She has also undertaken research on disability and cafe culture in Kashmir. Her primary areas of interest include theorizing about conflict zones, caste and Marxist and Ambedkarite politics and literature.

Shreeya Sharma
Research Assistant

Shreeya Sharma is pursuing her B.A.LLB (Hons.) degree at O.P. Jindal Global University. Her current areas of interest include Art and Cultural Heritage Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Technology Laws,Entertainment Law, and Space Law.

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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.