Diksha Sanyal

Key information

Diksha joined the Faculty of Law as a Mphil/Phd candidate in September 2023. Her thesis aims to unpack the ways in which non-normative, queer families in India navigate the legal system with the goal of developing a jurisprudential basis for their legal support and recognition. Her research is supported by the UCL Faculty Research Scholarship.

Diksha has a Bachelor of laws (B.A LLB (Hons.)) from India and an LLM specialising in Human Rights, Conflict and Justice from London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where she graduated with a Distinction. She was awarded the Felix scholarship for pursuing the LLM.

Research Supervisors:

Areas of expertise:

Family Law; feminist legal studies; queer rights and theory

Research interests:

Socio-legal and empirical methodologies; ethnographic methods; anthropology of kinship and sociology of intimacy; singlehood studies.

Academic/professional memberships:

Advocate and member, Bar Council of India
Member, Socio-Legal Studies Association UK

Professional experience:

Prior to joining UCL, Diksha worked as an Assistant Professor of Law at the O.P Jindal Global University, where she taught courses on Family law and Gender & Society. She was also a guest lecturer at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata where she co-taught a course on Queer Legal Jurisprudence and Advocacy.

She has also worked in a legal policy think tank, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy (New Delhi) and undertaken strategic action litigation and research at the Centre for Law and Policy Research (Bangalore).

Public engagements and media coverage:

Diksha Sanyal, “A Long Road to Nowhere: On the Many Disappointments of the Marriage Equality Case”, 27^th October 2023, available at < https://www.scobserver.in/journal/a-long-road-to-nowhere-on-the-many-disappointments-of-the-marriage-equality-case/>
Diksha Sanyal & Ketaki Chowkhani, “Marriage is Letting us Down. Should There be a Right Not to Marry?” 20^th August 2023, < https://www.theswaddle.com/marriage-is-letting-us-down-should-there-be-a-right-not-to-marry>
Diksha Sanyal & Namrata Mukherjee, “ Why Making Marital Rape A Crime is Unlikely to Provide Married Women the Legal Backing To Say No To Forced Sex” 23^rd June 2023 <https://article-14.com/post/why-making-marital-rape-a-crime-is-unlikely-to-provide-married-women-the-legal-backing-to-say-no-to-forced-sex-6494ffaa66bab>
Akshat Aggarwal, Diksha Sanyal & Namrata Mukherjee, “Beyond Section 377”, The Quint, 27^th August, 2019 available at < https://www.thequint.com/neon/gender/beyond-section-377-makings-laws-inclusive-for-the-lgbt-community>.
Diksha Sanyal, “We Need An Annual Diversity Statistic for the Judiciary”, The Wire, 25^th May, 2018, available at < https://thewire.in/law/annual-diversity-statistics-judiciary>

Publications:

Diksha Sanyal & Arijeet Ghosh, ‘Exploring Marital Status Discrimination in India: Prospects and Possibilities” in Family Studies, Oxford India Studies in Contemporary Society, (Ed Sujata Patel) (forthcoming in 2023).
Diksha Sanyal & Arijeet Ghosh (2022), ‘Abolishing consummation: the need to de-essentialise sex within marriage’, Indian Law Review, 6:3.
Sumathi Chandrashekaran, Diksha Sanyal, Tarika Jain and Shreya Tripathy, (2020) “Breaking Through the Old Boys’ Club: Rise of Women in the Lower Judiciary”, Economic and Political Weekly, 55:4.
Arijeet Ghosh & Diksha Sanyal, (2019) ‘How Can Families Be Understood Beyond Kinship and Marriage’ Economic and Political Weekly, 54:5