Ms. Saumya is a doctoral candidate at the National Law University, Delhi. Her interest lies in socio-legal research that examines the intricacies of people’s, especially women’s, engagement with the law in the context of their familial, social, and economic locations. She holds a master’s degree in constitutional law from the Indian Law Institute, New Delhi, where she graduated top of her class. Saumya’s work has appeared in various national and international journals and edited books, including Lexis Nexis and Routledge publications.
Ms. Saumya actively engages with research and awareness work on human rights and women and the law. In 2020, she was a visiting researcher at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, to work as a part of the Indian Ministry of Education’s SPARC Project on Law, Gender, and Sustainable Development. She has also served as a resource person for lectures on women and legal rights at the University of Udaipur’s UGC Centre for Women Studies. Having worked as a lawyer in the past, she had the opportunity to observe gender-based power relationships in society up close through cases involving constitutional rights, domestic violence, and labor law violations.
During her Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellowship, Ms. Saumya is examining how the low-waged women’s education, personal and socio-economic circumstances, and future goals influence the way they deal with problems at work, and when and how they choose to utilize the legal remedies available to them to raise their voice. The study will not only help her in her doctoral work, but also contribute to a deeper understanding of the role of gender in employment relations and improve the legal response to the needs and work-life experiences of low-waged women in India.