Workshop on Anti-Caste and Adivasi Indigenous Perspectives on Law, NALSAR

About the Workshop

It is focused space to engage these perspectives as central to contemporary debates. It is a focused four-day residential experience designed to enable young scholars to engage in sustained, interdisciplinary, peer-to-peer collaboration under the close mentorship of experienced faculty and professionals. Feedback shall be given on the papers written by the participants on any topic related to this Workshop.

All selected participants will be required to submit an 8,000-word draft or work-in-progress academic writing in advance of the Workshop. The Workshop is open by application to young scholars working to understand and map the levers of political, economic, and legal authority in the world today. We particularly welcome applications from scholars from marginalized communities. The

Workshop will be limited to a cohort of up to 20 participants, enabling sustained engagement. Participants may include final-year undergraduate law students, master’s students, doctoral candidates, junior faculty, and early-career practitioners working at the intersection of law and social justice.

Travel and Accommodation: The Workshop shall be organized on the campus of NALSAR Hyderabad. The University will provide accommodation to all selected candidates. Travel expenses from any city in India to and from Hyderabad shall be reimbursed upon submission of valid travel tickets.

Format

The programme will be a 4-day residential intensive workshop, structured around:

• Thematic lectures led by invited faculty.
• Small-group workshops (pre-circulated drafts).
• Focused roundtables and discussions.
• Participant-led interventions

Proposed Themes

The Workshop invites applications from scholars engaging with law in relation to broader questions of power, hierarchy, and knowledge production, including but not limited to the following themes:

• Anti-caste thought and legal theory, including questions of anti-subordination, critiques of neutrality and formal equality, and the ways in which caste operates as a structure of institutional power.
• Indigenous jurisprudence and legal pluralism, including engagements with customary law, non-state normative orders, and debates on recognition, autonomy, discrimination, and exclusion.
• Land, forest, and resource governance, with a focus on dispossession, extractive development, and the relationship between environmental justice and community rights.
• Governance, and the State, including tensions between indigenous autonomy and state authority, and forms of decentralization.
• Law, violence, and criminalization, examining policing, surveillance, and the role of law as an instrument of regulation and control over marginalized communities.
• Knowledge systems, narrative, and epistemic justice, including the role of testimony, literature, and lived experience in shaping legal understanding, and the challenges of translating such knowledge into formal legal frameworks.
• Comparative and global perspectives, including engagements with indigeneity across jurisdictions and the intersections of caste, race, and coloniality in shaping legal and political orders.

Faculty

The Workshop will bring together a curated group of scholars, including legal academics working on constitutional law, inequality, and governance, scholars of anti- caste and indigenous thought, and interdisciplinary researchers across law, humanities, and social sciences.

Timeline

• Application Deadline: 15 May 2026.
• Selection Intimation: 20 May 2026.
• Full-Paper Deadline: 30 July 2026.
• Workshop: 27-30 August 2026.

Application Process

Submit your applications on the link given at the end of the post before the deadline.

For any query

Please contact either Dr. Anurag Bhaskar (Adjunct Professor of Law) or Mr. Vidhik Kumar (Research Associate) at dr.ambedkarchair@nalsar.ac.in.

Click here to Apply.

Click here for the Official Notification.