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Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen

@swethaa.bsky.social
1.1K followers 120 following 47 posts

They / Them | Professor + Assoc. Dean for Research @ UCI Law Interdisciplinary research on Legal Profession, Alterities, Queers, Souths | See - swethaa.com/publications

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Reposted by Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen
Edward Elgar Publishing @elgarpublishing.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Research Handbook on Global Legal Education Edited by @swethaa.bsky.social, @ucirvinelaw.bsky.social and Bryant G. Garth, @abfresearch.bsky.social 🆓 Chapter | A kaleidoscopic invitation to consider global legal education: doi.org/10.4337/9781... More information: www.e-elgar.com/shop/isbn/97...
This authoritative Research Handbook examines legal training and its impact on law and society. Leading experts adopt a kaleidoscope perspective to compare diverse country case studies, highlighting shifting patterns rather than a single model of ‘global’ legal education.

Contributors explore how legal education remains nationalised via local histories, politics and markets, despite borrowing models and language from modern, merit-based, or global approaches. Chapters assess the appearance of law schools as powerful sites where divisions of class, race, gender, empire and prestige are reproduced, contested and sometimes reimagined. The Research Handbook demonstrates how familiar patterns of hierarchies, inequalities and Western-centric ideals travel widely alongside diverse efforts in majority world contexts to resist, revisit and reimagine fairer institutions. Combining doctrinal analysis, institutional histories, archives, interviews and fieldwork, this Research Handbook advances research and promotes further study.
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Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen @swethaa.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
Excited to head back to the @abfresearch.bsky.social for a year www.americanbarfoundation.org/the-abf-welc...
americanbarfoundation.org
The ABF Welcomes John M. Eason as the 2024-25 Neukom Research Chair - ABF
Eason’s research interests challenge existing models and develop new theories of community, health, race, punishment, and rural/urban processes.
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Suryapratim Roy @suryaroy.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
With Rahul Sambaraju, I argue denial of racism and its coding in nationalism abets acts of racist violence. Thank you to @deirdre for running this piece. And thanks to Philomena Mullen for discussions on this, and @swethaa.bsky.social Ballakrishnen for injecting the word blasé into my head:
irishexaminer.com
Ireland’s history of humiliating the powerless has a new chapter
Downplaying the lived experience of minorities is not a new thing in Ireland - and it is allowing racism to gain traction
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Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen @swethaa.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
We might not be the people Sundaram and Kapur expected, but we are here, and the specter is upon us: what is the art history to come? Meghaa's latest on history, contradiction, postcolony, and the re(al)births of global modernism that await us. www.modernismmodernity.org/forums/posts...
modernismmodernity.org
The Art History to Come: Vivan Sundaram’s Marxism in the Expanded Field (Geeta’s Bookshelf), 1968–2000 | Modernism / Modernity Print+
In 2000, the Indian artist Vivan Sundaram made a portrait of the critic Geeta Kapur’s bookshelf titled Marxism in the Expanded Field (MEF, fig.1). Framed and sectioned by a beaten band of tape spelling a famous line from the Communist Manifesto, “All that is solid melts into air,” and executed nearly a decade after India’s neo-liberal reforms of 1991, MEF documents a suddenly
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Reposted by Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen
American Bar Foundation @abfresearch.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
Hello, Bluesky! 👋 We’re new here. At the American Bar Foundation (ABF), we conduct research at the intersection of law and society. Let’s connect and dive into today’s most pressing issues. Learn more about our work here: www.americanbarfoundation.org
americanbarfoundation.org
American Bar Foundation - Research Advancing Justice
The American Bar Foundation is a leading research institute. Our faculty produces interdisciplinary research to advance justice and the understanding of law.
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Reposted by Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen
Law and Society Association @lawandsociety.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
With their new “Law and the Interloper” workshop series, longtime friends @swethaa.bsky.social and @suryaroy.bsky.social will “queer” law and society research by centering a multitude of marginalized perspectives. Read more here! bit.ly/3Bpn5Io #QueerTheory #LawAndSociety #LSAGrants
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Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen @swethaa.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
In this chat w/ @lawandsociety.bsky.social , @suryaroy.bsky.social and I talk about the plans we have for our post-LSA'25 workshop, long-term friendships as method, and the space of the interloper to consider law and society research. (Thanks, Crissonna for the engagement!)
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Reposted by Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen
JJ Wright, Ph.D. @drjjwright.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
I'm delighted to share this new publication which is the editorial introduction to a special issue: "Mobilising Queer Joy: Establishing Queer Joy Studies." Please share (the joy) and help us spread word of this new area of study. @queerjoylab.bsky.social journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
New article. Mobilizing queer joy: establishing queer joy studies. JJ wright and Casey burkhoder. editorial introduction to a special issue of the journal sexualities. two pieces of illustrated dried flowers are on either side of the text.
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Surabhi Shukla @surabhishukla.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
Sometimes, but only sometimes, two wrongs can make a right. Based on an erroneous definition of transgender in a prior case, which was then codified, the Kerala High Court has found that intersex children cannot be subjected to surgeries based on parental consent alone. lawandsexuality.com
lawandsexuality.com
Law and Sexuality
Bi-monthly Updates on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Cases in India
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UC Irvine Environmental Law Program @ucilawenvironment.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
On behalf of dozens of students, faculty, staff, community leaders, and partner organizations who comprise the Environmental Law Program @ucirvine.bsky.social School of Law, we are pleased to share our 2024 Annual Report. Here's to a momentous year ahead! myemail.constantcontact.com/Environmenta...
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Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen @swethaa.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
Maryam Khan's latest on postcolonial state-making in South Asia and the unstable middles and alternative political possibilities that subsist in these contexts. Masterful complication of the "East-West symbiosis" in the Pakistani constitutional case. www.tandfonline.com/eprint/6EHC4...
tandfonline.com
Patterns of Power in Constitutional Design: East-West Symbiosis in United Pakistan
Using an analytical framework of a ‘symbiosis’ between East Bengal and West Pakistan, this article centres the two-wing configuration of united Pakistan as a key element in shaping political contes...
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Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen @swethaa.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
Path dependencies of scholar activist / activist scholars, intergenerational cleavages in conversation and movements, and the grace to sit with inconvenient facts when working with causes close to our heart. Brilliant start to Day 2 of this HKU + @lawandsociety.bsky.social conference.
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Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen @swethaa.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
Grateful to Cynthia Farid, Yugank Goyal and Sergio Latorre for bringing together this community @ HKU to discuss scholar-activism and the nuanced majority world logics of knowledge production and collaboration.
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Reposted by Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen
Damni Kain @damnikain.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
Big thanks to TSR for supporting @snehaannavarapu.bsky.social and me in organising the symposium — 'Movement in (Ethnographic) Method: Space, Time and Theory'. Call for participants will be out soon! Also, do not miss the promising keynote lectures by Nayanika Mathur and @asiyaislam.bsky.social
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Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen @swethaa.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
Thanks to everyone who came to this today. The questions helped me reassess my own prefigurative priors re: methods and vulnerability. For those who missed it, the conversation drew from this (open source!) chapter in the Massoud+Chua book re: sociolegal methods - www.cambridge.org/core/books/o...
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Reposted by Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen
Law and Society Association @lawandsociety.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
What does #LawAndSociety scholarship look like when approached from marginalized perspectives on the “periphery”? Join the conversation—apply for Law and the Interloper: #QueerTheory in Global Law and Society Scholarship by 12/15! adobe.ly/3Uqi1cN @swethaa.bsky.social @suryaroy.bsky.social
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Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen @swethaa.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
Had a truly generative time at the ABF thinking in community about my next project on queerness and everyday macro-(non)aggressions. Thank you to all who came and engaged with such generosity. 🥲 Next stop: NYC to talk about how this relates to law, humor and identity w/these awesome humans:
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Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen @swethaa.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
"Taking Kurdish queer struggles seriously can similarly “unflatten” our analyses of social and political dynamics at a local level"
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Jennifer C. Nash @jennifercnash.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
Moving this from X to here - reminder that Black feminist theory summer institute applications are open. Details here: gendersexualityfeminist.duke.edu/black-femini...
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Jennifer C. Nash @jennifercnash.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
For those of us who think about the institutional life of women's/gender/sexuality studies, this is interesting (and, I think, sad) news: news.ucsc.edu/2024/11/femi...
news.ucsc.edu
After 50 successful years, Feminist Studies faculty vote to disestablish the formal department, making way for more wide-ranging feminist scholarship across campus
Feminist Studies faculty and staff are committed to helping current students enrolled in the department's programs earn their degrees
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Daniel LaChance @dwlachance.bsky.social · 01/12/2024
Advanced doctoral students, early career faculty, and recent J.D.s: Doing work in legal history, broadly defined? Apply for the 2025 Hurst Institute in Legal History, a two week workshop and seminar in June. Deadline 1/15/25. More info: www.law.wisc.edu/hurst-instit...
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Christiana Essie Sagay @christianasagay.com · 13/11/2024
How have issue linkages featured in the framing of a transnational labour mobility regime? TWAIL-ing the Global Compact for Migration, I attempt to answer this question. Read the full article on @TWAILReview here bit.ly/4htIboW
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folukeifejola @folukeifejola.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
In the Zong case the court heard how people had been thrown overboard to drown for an insurance claim. "The judges took their decisions on a technical point of evidence...nobody concerned in the case made any objection to slavery as a matter of principle." www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/403...
prospectmagazine.co.uk
Why lawyers were as culpable as any slaver
The focus on individual traders like Colston means lawyers are out of sight—but they facilitated the trade
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Law and Society Association @lawandsociety.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
Workshop applications are still open for “Law and the Interloper: Queer Theory in Critical Global Law and Society Scholarship”! Apply before December 15th: adobe.ly/3Uqi1cN @swethaa.bsky.social @suryaroy.bsky.social #QueerTheory #LawAndSociety #AccessToJustice
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Meera Deo @meeradeo.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
Hello, legal ed scholars! Here's my starter pack of folks studying legal education (broadly defined). Happy to add to it. go.bsky.app/JdGzRAP
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Danish Sheikh @dansheikh.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
Melbourne friends: Delighted to share that my lecture-performance ‘Much to do with Law, but More to do with Love’ has been shortlisted for the Midsumma Queer Playwrighting Showcase. Catch me along with these other exciting new shows at Gasworks Theatre in 2025! www.midsumma.org.au/whats-on/eve...
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Claerwen O’Hara @claerwen.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
Excited to be presenting (my first) keynote address at the Melbourne Doctoral Forum on Legal Theory this week! Even more excited that what I’ll be presenting is a chapter (co- authored with @crisveijk.bsky.social) from the exciting new books I co-edited with @pagingdrpaige.bsky.social!
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Meera Deo @meeradeo.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
*IT'S LAUNCH DAY!* I'm thrilled to present our LSSSE Annual Report, "Twenty Years of LSSSE: Sharing Trends in Legal Education," which tracks patterns in legal ed on everything from diversity to debt, from learning outcomes to student satisfaction. Take a peek 👇 lssse.indiana.edu/annual-resul...
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Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen @swethaa.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
Ack, I think I made the start of one (but it only includes people i know already are on here, so please @ me if you would like to be added) - go.bsky.app/BViLYTV
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Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen @swethaa.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
Nice to see my primary intellectual home and incubator here. Time to start a starter pack for LSA scholars (on it as soon as I figure out what a starter pack is/does 😂)
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Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen @swethaa.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Looking forward to being in Chicago next week at the American Bar Foundation. I'll be presenting work on nonbinary identity navigation in the legal profession + a case for doing socio-legal research with a queer theory & CRT - "queerCRT" - lens. www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speake...
americanbarfoundation.org
Speaker Series: Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen - ABF
Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen (Law Professor) examines intersections between law, globalization and stratification from a critical feminist and global south perspective.
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Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen @swethaa.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
I really enjoyed writing this chapter on vulnerability and methods for Massoud and Chua's book Out of Place (CUP'24). But when I wrote the piece, I couldn't have imagined this kind of engagement - thank you, David + SLR! www.sociolegalreview.com/post/out-of-...
sociolegalreview.com
Out of Place in Italy: Positionality in Comparative Studies
David Nelken
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Suryapratim Roy @suryaroy.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
Law and the Interloper is a project (in all its subversiveness) that @swethaa.bsky.social and I have been planning for a while. We’re doing a workshop around the time of the Law and the Society Association conference 2025. Have a look at the call for papers and join us!
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Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen @swethaa.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
Thinking about Stacy Wolf's influential work on how performance offers queered utopias in plain sight as I get ready to watch #Wicked, a truly ever-giving canon. academic.oup.com/book/25767
academic.oup.com
Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical
Abstract. This book demonstrates how the history of the Broadway musical is inseparable from the history of U.S. women, and argues that this mainstream, co
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Thenmozhi Soundararajan/Dalit Diva ✨️is querying✨️ @dalitdiva.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
For my new followers: Here is my book the #TraumaofCaste from @natlanticbooks.bsky.social. It is one of the first to explore the history of #caste in North America. It examines inter-generational trauma & pathways to heal. #CasteInAmerica #Healing www.amazon.com/Trauma-Caste...
A picture of the author Thenmozhi Soundararajan with her book the Trauma of Caste. she is wearing a colorful dress and the background is filled with buddhist objects.
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Feminist Legal Studies @flsjournal.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
“We have a commitment to analysing and understanding sexual violence, as well as the ways in which institutions, including universities and academic publishers, provide what Nicola Gavey (2005) describes as the ‘cultural scaffolding’ for this violence.” Read here: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
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Rachel Lopez @rlopez.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
Excited to share our new PLS piece now up Virginia L. Rev. & @ssrn.bsky.social Co-authored w/ Kempis Songster & Gerald Torres, it explores the role participatory methods in legal scholarship can play in democratizing the law. 🧵 virginialawreview.org/articles/par...
virginialawreview.org
Participatory Law Scholarship as Demosprudence - Virginia Law Review
Through participatory law scholarship (“PLS”)—legal scholarship written in collaboration with those without formal legal training but expertise in law’s injustice through lived experience—Kempis Songs...
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Veena Dubal @veenadubal.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
It was the power and advocacy of the education worker labor unions that formed the Department of Education. It is going to be the power and advocacy of education worker labor unions that protects Higher Education from the Department of Education in the coming years. @AAUP
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Queer Judgments Project @queerjudgments.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
Queer scholars, this looks like a fantastic gathering for those of us who think/write/play with queer. This event is organised by @swethaa.bsky.social and @suryaroy.bsky.social and will be held at just after the Law & Society Association Meeting in Chicago on May 26 2025.
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Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen @swethaa.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
Following the next LSA meeting in Chicago'25, @suryaroy.bsky.social and I are hosting a "Law and Interloper" workshop. If you think/write about the queer / periphery / outsider / outlier and their connection to law, please consider applying! CFP below 👇
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Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen @swethaa.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
In this piece about "emotional grammar", Raj deftly foregrounds how queer classes "makes space for emotions, how mapping these emotions expose normative, critical, and theoretical tensions, and how these emotions challenge or reify institutionalised power dynamics within and beyond the classroom"
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Q Manivannan MSP @qmanivannan.bsky.social · 23/09/2024
@mybisa.bsky.social BISA 2025 announcement is out and it’s that time of the year again. Fancy a roundtable on IR & the sexual/sexy? Subthemes: - erasure of (a)sexuality in the discipline - politics of sex & intimacy in pedagogy, theory, ethnography - the sexy/sexual as generative analytical frame
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Jana Bacevic 🌲🌳✊🏴 @unsocialtheory.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
The Institute for Medical Humanities at Durham is offering scholarships for PhD students to attend the Queer Methodologies in Medical Humanities International PhD school - do check it out and share with your grads, esp. if from low- and middle-income countries: medhumsplatform.org/queer-method...
medhumsplatform.org
Queer Methodologies in Medical Humanities
Applications are now open for the Medical Humanities International PhD School (24-26 March).
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Q Manivannan MSP @qmanivannan.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
go.bsky.app/SY36J2i South Asian scholars and writers! Please reply if you’d like to be added. 🌸
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Megan Carroll @mcsociology.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
Introducing the Ace/Aro Studies starter pack! If you are a scholar specializing in asexualities or aromaticism, let me know so I can add you. go.bsky.app/9TLnCmy
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folukeifejola @folukeifejola.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
"...decolonial thinking is not leftist, but rather another thing entirely: it is a de-linking from the modern, political episteme articulated as right, center, and left; it is an opening towards another thing, on the march, searching for itself in the difference." Walter Mignolo
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Pilar Gonalons-Pons @pgonalon.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
Saying hi to this new site by sharing my last ASR pub, w amazing colab @imarinescu.bsky.social! We show that privatized childcare services play a direct role creating family income inequality in the US, bc unaffordable childcare hurts lower income families most doi.org/10.1177/0003...
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Mavluda Sattorova @iilresearcher.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
📢A “big” conference alert!📢 To all colleagues working in the fields of PIL, IEL, LPE, law & corporations, empire, colonialism: Liverpool is hosting the SLSA annual conference 2025 and the call for papers is out: www.liverpool.ac.uk/law/slsa-202...
liverpool.ac.uk
Call for papers - Liverpool Law School - University of Liverpool
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Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen @swethaa.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
UCI Law is excited to host the second Annual West Coast Sexuality, Gender, and Law Conference. CFP below and abstracts due 12/15. docs.google.com/document/d/1...
docs.google.com
WCSGL 2025 Call for Papers
Second Annual West Coast Sexuality, Gender and & Law Conference Call for Papers and Commentators Abstract Submission Deadline: December 15, 2024, 11:59 PM Pacific Submission Portal *Please note ...
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