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 with nearly 15 years of experience in criminal justice, Neetika holds graduate degrees in law from Harvard Law School and in women’s studies from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She is also an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research, Birkbeck, University of London. Neetika is the co-founder of The Square Circle Clinic at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, which is India's leading centre for pro bono criminal defence litigation and innovative criminal justice research. Prior to her work at The Clinic, Neetika provided pro bono legal representation to women and child survivors of sexual and domestic violence through a feminist non-profit organisation in Lucknow, India.