Neetika Vishwanath

Neetika is an Indira Gandhi Scholar pursuing a DPhil in Criminology at the University of Oxford. Her doctoral studies are fully funded by the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development at Somerville College. Her research is an ethnographic study of decision-making and discretion in India’s special criminal courts dealing with sexual offences against children, supervised by Professor Carolyn Hoyle and Professor Lucia Zedner.

Trained as a lawyer in India, she holds graduate degrees in law from Harvard Law School and in women’s studies from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Neetika is also an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research, Birkbeck, University of London. She is the co-founder of The Square Circle Clinic, a criminal justice initiative at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, and is currently on sabbatical from this role. Since 2017, she has, alongside three colleagues, co-led Project 39A and its subsequent transition into The Square Circle Clinic, contributing to its development as a leading centre for pro bono criminal defence litigation and innovative criminal justice research in India. Prior to this, she provided pro bono legal representation to women and child survivors of sexual and domestic violence through a feminist non-profit organisation in Lucknow, India. Neetika has led significant studies on criminal justice in India, with particular attention to the death penalty, sentencing, and sexual offences.