Radha D’SOUZA

Prof. Dr. Radha D’SOUZA is a critical scholar, social justice activist, barrister and writer from India. She is Professor of International Law, Development and Conflict Studies at the University of Westminster.  Before joining the academia D’Souza practiced as a barrister at the High Court of Bombay in India specialising in Constitutional law, administrative law, labour and environmental rights, civil liberties and public interest litigation. She has taught in the Universities of Auckland and Waikato in Aotearoa/New Zealand and worked on collaborative projects with academics in Universities of Oslo, McGill, Manitoba and British Columbia. She has taught in departments of Law, Sociology, Development Studies and Human Geography.

D’Souza’s research and writing focuses on the Third World, colonialism and neo-colonialism and the law, history of imperialism in South Asia, resource conflicts in the Third World (especially water and land) and comparative theory and philosophy.  She has written and published extensively in academic and non-academic journals and platforms on a range of subjects and issues concerning social and global justice. Her recent book What’s Wrong With Rights? Social Movements, Law and Liberal Imaginations (Pluto, 2018) maps the transformations in the regime of international rights to the transformations in post-World War imperialism. She has written on activism and the security state, anti-colonial movements in South Asia, imperialism and self-determination, colonialism and international law, and on militarisation and ethno-national conflicts in South Asia. Her book Contextualising Interstate Disputes Over Krishna Waters: Law, Science and Imperialism (Orient Longmans: 2006) is the first major socio-legal analysis of conflicts over river waters in the Third World and amongst the few anywhere.

D’Souza is a democratic rights activist from India. She was a trade union organiser in Mumbai. D’Souza worked with unorganised sector workers to unionise and defend their rights. She has worked with anti-globalisation movements on labour standards in international trade agreements, Third World debt, Structural Adjustment Programmes, and militarism. She has worked as a social justice campaigner in South Asia and the Asia-Pacific regions and Aotearoa/New Zealand. In the United Kingdom she works with Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC) to support communities adversely impacted by anti-terrorism laws.

Together with Dutch artist Jonas Staal, D’Souza co-produced the Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (CICC) a performative art exhibition based on ideas in her book What’s Wrong With Rights? and hosted by art space Framer Framed in Amsterdam. A musical performance based on the CICC is scheduled to take place at the Helsinki Music Festival in August 2022. D’Souza has published short stories, poems and translated poems from Indian languages.