Keertana Kannabiran Tella

DPhil Socio-Legal Studies

Other affiliations

St. Anne's College Faculty of Law

Biography

Keertana Kannabiran Tella is a DPhil student in Socio-Legal Studies, supervised by Prof. Nicole Stremlau. 

She is most interested in questions of health and law. Her DPhil research, supported by the Faculty of Law, proposes to study meaning-making by legal actors on the question of reproductive rights and justice, the forms of (in)formal legal ordering this negotiation produces, and its effects on women on the peripheries of public and judicial imagination. Her writing, over four years, has spanned reproductive rights, denials and justice across contexts; and judicial imaginaries, rights subversions, and minorities, more recently. Her work has been published by Routledge, the International Journal of Law in Context and the CRISPR Journal. Other writing includes contributions to the Economic and Political Weekly, The India Forum, and public writing in major newspapers, on issues spanning reproductive rights, public health in the Global South, and feminist organizing. 

From 2023 - 2025, Keertana worked as a research consultant with Sama Resource Group for Women and Health, focusing on the organization's ongoing projects related to public health and social and health policy.  

She holds MA degrees from the University of Chicago, (Anthropology, 2023) and the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad, India (Development Studies, 2021). 

Research Interests

Socio-Legal Studies; Critical Carceral Studies; Reproductive Rights; Minorities; Feminist Legal Studies; Pluralism; Health; Human Rights; Judicial Decision-Making

Research projects & programmes

Centre for Socio-Legal Studies