Dr Shalini Nair

Based on her research on structural inequality in the global South margins, Shalini’s work is invested in decolonial, abolitionist approaches to justice for gender-based violence survivors.

She has a PhD in Gender Studies from the University of Sussex. Her thesis examines sexual oppression, collective resistance, and justice from the standpoint of marginalised survivors in the diverse geopolitical context of India. It draws on ethnographic research, field interviews, and analyses of laws.

Before joining academia, Shalini was a national journalist in India reporting on the union government’s social sector ministries, politics and policies, and its grassroots impact.

Shalini was awarded a three-year-long Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship for her research on justice for marital rape survivors in India. The project, which started in September 2025, aims to make a significant intervention in the ongoing policy and civil society discourse on marital rape criminalisation in India. Based on the foundations of her work as an Indian policy journalist specialising in gender and social justice and her academic research on gender-based violence, this research will build original scholarship on what decolonial, abolitionist justice entails.

Research interests: Gender-based violence, Abolition & Justice, Feminist theory, Decolonial approaches, Critical disability studies, Social policy

Recent Publications:

Nair, S. (2026). Locational intersectionality: a decolonial standpoint theory from the margins. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2026.2658539

Nair, S. (2023) ‘Speak-out movements from the margins: An intersectional and spatial analysis of sexual violence in India’, Journal of Gender Studies. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2023.2216637

Nair, S. (2022). ‘Memory is the most important strategy in Kashmir’, The Caravan: A Journal of Politics and Culture, 23 February.

Nair, S. (2021). ‘Call it what it is: Rape’, The Indian Express, 12 March.

Nair, S. (2020). ‘Increasing age of marriage will be an exercise of carceral power by the state which will disproportionately affect Dalit, Adivasi women’, The Indian Express, 22 August.