CONTRIBUTORS

Furqan Ahmad has written books on family law, environmental laws and human rights including acclaimed works such as Triple Talaq: An Analytical Study with Emphasis on Socio Legal Aspects (1984), Legal Regulation of Hazardous Substance (2009) and Human Rights in India (2011).

Irfan Engineer is Director of the Center for Study of Society and Secularism, Mumbai, India, which was set up by his father Asghar Ali Engineer. He is the author of several books and an eminent voice in the struggle for justice and secularism.

Maidul Islam is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, India. After completing his doctorate from Oxford University in 2012, he has taught political science at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Presidency University, Kolkata.

Kalindi Kokal has a doctorate in law from the Martin Luther University, Halle­Wittenberg, Germany. As a doctoral candidate in the Department for Law and Anthropology, she focused on understanding how non-state actors in dispute processing engage with state law. Her dissertation is an ethnographic study of dispute-processing mechanisms in two rural communities in the states of Maharashtra and Uttarakhand in India. Her work explores how village, bira deri (kinship-based) and neighborhood pancayats (community-based councils that handle dispute processing and other administrative activities), ‘barefoot lawyers’, and religious and supernatural elements operate as non-state actors in dispute processing within these village communities.

Abdul Matin is Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Aligarh Muslim University, India. He has previously taught at AMU as Reader (1998 to 2006), Senior Lecturer (1995 to 1998), and Lecturer (1990 to 1995). Among his publi­cations are seven books, 16 research papers, and 44 conference papers. He has been engaged with research supervision for MPhil and PhD candidates, and as well has completed six projects, with one ongoing.

Werner Menski, MA (Kiel), PhD (London), has taught various courses in the Law School at SOAS (1980—2014) and is now Emeritus Professor of South Asian Laws at SOAS, UK. He continues to be the editor of a major peer-reviewed journal, South Asia Research, and maintains an active publications programme. Presently, he is focused around the globally valid kite theory of legal management with its four competing (and themselves internally plural) corner points.

Nazima Parveen is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Interwoven Arts and Science, Krea University, (Andhra Pradesh). She is also a Research Fellow (consultant) at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) and an Alumni of Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. She has more than fifteen years of research experience and has worked in the UK, India, and Nepal on different government and European Union—funded research programs. She has been working on the issues and debates related to the rights of ethnic and reli­gious minorities, communalisation of space and the politics of urban transforma­tion in colonial and postcolonial India. She has been a recipient of many awards and fellowships, including the ICSSR Postdoctoral Fellowship (2018—2020), the Royal New Zealand Academy Doctoral Scholarship 2013—2016, ICSSR-CSDS Doctoral Fellowship Program 2010-12, and ASIA Fellow Award 2008-2009 by Asian Scholarship Foundation, Bangkok. Her book, Contested Homelands: Politics of Space and Identity is under publication.

Misbah Rashid is Assistant Professor Gitam University, Hyderabad, India. Previously, she has been Visiting Faculty Chandigarh University, Chandigarh and Senior Researcher at Centre for Equity Studies, New Delhi. She holds a PhD in political science from Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her work is centered around Islamic jurisprudence, gender and family laws in Islam, Muslim Personal Law, communal violence in South Asia and in-migration and labour rights in Kashmir. Her articles on Islam, blasphemy laws and gender have appeared in peer-reviewed journals.

M. R. Shamshad is an advocate and graduated in law from the University of Delhi, India. He practised as a lawyer for more than 20 years including 11 years as Advocate on Record in the Supreme Court. He has largely practised in the Supreme Court of India and the Delhi High Court. He has appeared in many important constitutional law matters including the land dispute of Babri Masjid (Ayodhya), the triple talaq case, etc. He has appeared in arbitration and other commercial cases and represented the government and public sector undertak­ings in the Supreme Court. He writes columns in leading newspapers in India. For a period (2004-2006), he was a visiting lecturer in the Indian law Institute, New Delhi.