Zaid Deva

Zaid is a DPhil candidate at the Faculty of Law under the supervision of Professor Nicholas Barber. His doctoral thesis examines the federal imaginaries of state and state sovereignty in the Indian constitution-making project.

Zaid completed his undergraduate law degree at Gujarat National Law University, India, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Student Law Review, Managing Editor of the Law and Society Review, and Chair of the Student Research Development Council. During his undergraduate studies, Zaid also interned at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, where he worked on asymmetric federalism in India. A revised version of this work was later published in the Indian Law Review, where it received the Best Article Award (2021). He subsequently pursued an LLM at SOAS University of London, graduating with Distinction overall and in his dissertation on constitution-making in challenging political environments. He then came to Oxford and completed an MPhil in Law on constitutional pluralism in India under the supervision of Professor Tarunabh Khaitan.

Zaid’s professional background spans both legal practice and academic research. Prior to his DPhil, he practised before the Kashmir High Court and has also interned with a Justice of the Supreme Court of India and a former Additional Solicitor General of India. He is interested in public law, international law, legal history, and political theory.