Dr Rishika Sahgal joined Birmingham Law School as assistant professor in law in August 2023. Prior to that she was the university teacher in international human rights law at the University of Sheffield. She completed the DPhil (PhD) in Law at the University of Oxford in August 2022.

Dr Rishika Sahgal’s current research explores displacement and resistance in the Global South. More expansively, it explores the role of rights holders in defining the content of their own rights, thereby playing a protagonist role in rights interpretation. It does so in the context of the right to housing and the eviction of informal settlements in India and South Africa. This research contributes to long-standing debates in the fields of public law and human rights, including the interconnectedness of civil and political and social and economic rights; the relationship between procedural and substantive rights; and the role of courts, other institutions, and rights holders themselves in defining rights.

While at Oxford, Dr Sahgal taught comparative and international human rights law at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, was Chairperson of Oxford Pro Bono Publico, Convenor of the South Asian Law Discussion Group, and Editor at the Oxford Human Rights Hub. As part of the Hub, she co-authored submissions before the UK Joint Committee on Human Rights, and the Women and Equalities Committee.

Prior to Oxford, Dr Sahgal served as law clerk to the Chief Justice of India at the Supreme Court of India. She completed her undergraduate studies in law at National Law University, Delhi, where she was senior researcher on the Death Penalty Research Project. Their research was cited by the Law Commission of India in its report recommending the abolition of the penalty, and by Dr Shashi Tharoor, member of the Indian Parliament, while introducing a private member’s bill to abolish the death penalty in India.

Rishika Sahgal pursues several harmonious strands of research. Her current research investigates how people in the Global South use participation procedures to resist displacement. This research contributes to long-standing debates in the fields of public law and human rights, including the interconnectedness of civil and political and social and economic rights; the relationship between procedural and substantive rights; and the role of courts, other institutions, and rights holders themselves in defining rights. She also explores the death penalty in India, and particularly draws attention to the lived experience of prisoners on death row, and argues that this ought to shape legal understanding regarding why the death penalty amounts to torture under domestic and international human rights law.