Vibha Swaminathan

Biography

Vibha is currently a law student at the LL.B. (Hons.) programme at the National Law School of India University. She holds a B.A. (Hons.) in Political Science, from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University. She has an interdisciplinary research interest in the political and legal fragilities of citizenship, generated along intersectional axes of poverty, gender, religion and language. As part of a Citizenship and Immigration Clinic at the National Law School, Vibha has drafted petitions and briefed lawyers on pro bono cases, defending individuals against citizenship deprivation in Assam, India. Sharing the growing concern over the widespread production of statelessness through documentary regimes of citizenship, and the resultant indefinite detention without the possibility of deportation, Vibha is keen on building legal interventions based on academic engagement. Apart from citizenship litigation, Vibha has been involved in criminal defence and human rights litigation, working with lawyers on cases involving the death penalty, terror offences and civil liberties. At Oxford, Vibha wishes to explore questions of legal precarity and carcerality in citizenship determination processes, combining theoretical frameworks of public law with analytical perspectives from criminology and refugee studies. Ultimately, she hopes to combine a litigation practice in citizenship, criminal and human rights law, informed by academic research in these fields.