Dr Rishika Sahgal

Dr Rishika Sahgal

Birmingham Law School
Assistant Professor in Law

Dr Rishika Sahgal (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in Law at the University of Birmingham. She completed her DPhil in Law at the University of Oxford in 2022 as a Rhodes Scholar, exploring issues of displacement and resistance in India and South Africa. Her research and teaching interests span human rights, equality law, and criminal justice issues, from comparative Global South and anticolonial perspectives.

Qualifications

  • BA LLB (Honours), National Law University, Delhi (2015)
  • BCL, University of Oxford (2017)
  • MPhil in Law, University of Oxford (2019)
  • DPhil in Law, University of Oxford (2022)

Biography

Dr Rishika Sahgal joined Birmingham Law School as assistant professor in law in August 2023. Prior to that she was the university teacher in international human rights law at the University of Sheffield. She completed the DPhil (PhD) in Law at the University of Oxford in August 2022.

Dr Rishika Sahgal’s current research explores displacement and resistance in the Global South. More expansively, it explores the role of rights holders in defining the content of their own rights, thereby playing a protagonist role in rights interpretation. It does so in the context of the right to housing and the eviction of informal settlements in India and South Africa. This research contributes to long-standing debates in the fields of public law and human rights, including the interconnectedness of civil and political and social and economic rights; the relationship between procedural and substantive rights; and the role of courts, other institutions, and rights holders themselves in defining rights.

While at Oxford, Dr Sahgal taught comparative and international human rights law at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, was Chairperson of Oxford Pro Bono Publico, Convenor of the South Asian Law Discussion Group, and Editor at the Oxford Human Rights Hub. As part of the Hub, she co-authored submissions before the UK Joint Committee on Human Rights, and the Women and Equalities Committee.

Prior to Oxford, Dr Sahgal served as law clerk to the Chief Justice of India at the Supreme Court of India. She completed her undergraduate studies in law at National Law University, Delhi, where she was senior researcher on the Death Penalty Research Project. Their research was cited by the Law Commission of India in its report recommending the abolition of the penalty, and by Dr Shashi Tharoor, member of the Indian Parliament, while introducing a private member’s bill to abolish the death penalty in India.

Teaching

  • Decolonising Legal Concepts
  • Public Law
  • Canadian Constitutional Law

Postgraduate supervision

Rishika welcomes doctoral supervision in these areas:
• International and comparative human rights law
• Socio-economic rights
• Decolonization of law and justice
• Critical approaches to human rights

Research

Rishika Sahgal pursues several harmonious strands of research. Her current research investigates how people in the Global South use participation procedures to resist displacement. This research contributes to long-standing debates in the fields of public law and human rights, including the interconnectedness of civil and political and social and economic rights; the relationship between procedural and substantive rights; and the role of courts, other institutions, and rights holders themselves in defining rights. She also explores the death penalty in India, and particularly draws attention to the lived experience of prisoners on death row, and argues that this ought to shape legal understanding regarding why the death penalty amounts to torture under domestic and international human rights law.

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Sahgal, R 2024, 'Proportionality Review and Economic and Social Rights in India', Indian Law Review, vol. 8, pp. 207-229. https://doi.org/10.1080/24730580.2024.2368686

Sahgal, R 2020, 'Strengthening Democracy in India through Participation Rights', World Comparative Law/ Verfassung und Recht in Übersee, vol. 2020, no. 4, pp. 468-491. https://doi.org/10.5771/0506-7286-2020-4

Chapter

Sahgal, R 2023, Decolonizing criminal law in India. in C Cunneen, A Deckert, A Porter, J Tauri & R Webb (eds), The Routledge International Handbook on Decolonizing Justice. 1st edn, Routledge International Handbooks, Routledge, London; New York, pp. 391-401. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003176619-40

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