I research and write on international criminal law, AI governance, and human rights — foregrounding Global South perspectives and decolonial frameworks.
I grew up curious about power — who holds it, who is excluded from it, and how the law — despite its pretensions to universality — operates with profound partiality across peoples, geographies, species, and generations.
That curiosity took me from journalism at Manipal University, to international law at SOAS, to the United Nations in New York, and eventually to Dharamshala, where I live and work.
My MA dissertation at SOAS argued that codified laws of war and international criminal justice did not begin in the West — that Ancient India, Buddhism, Gandhi, and Justice Radhabinod Pal's historic dissent at the Tokyo Tribunal are serious legal and philosophical antecedents that international criminal justice has yet to fully reckon with. That argument remains central to my work.
I have studied international human rights law at Oxford, spent a year at Columbia University cross-registered at Columbia Law School, and worked across human rights organisations and UN diplomatic missions. Currently through the Oxford/UNESCO programme on AI, Justice, and the Rule of Law, I am exploring the intersection of artificial intelligence, legal accountability, and democratic governance — and the question of whether existing legal institutions are equipped to meet the challenges that AI systems now pose.
In September 2026 I begin a Postgraduate Diploma in Law — a formal conversion to legal practice, following a decade of work that has been moving steadily in that direction.
My submission to the UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance has been published on the official UN AI Dialogue website as part of the formal consultation record. I also delivered an oral intervention at the stakeholder consultation convened as part of the Dialogue process.
Accountability for mass atrocity, the architecture of international tribunals, and the reach of criminal justice across borders. I examine how private actors — arms companies, AI developers, mercenaries — operate beyond existing legal frameworks, and how states selectively engage with international law.
AI governance begins before deployment — in extraction, infrastructure, labour, and conflict. I examine legal frameworks for automated systems across their entire lifecycle, including questions of AI personhood and accountability for harm.
Fundamental rights under pressure from conflict, technology, and environmental destruction — with particular attention to those whom existing frameworks most persistently fail.
Current threads, approached from a decolonial and Global South perspective: