NLS Faculty Awarded the Melbourne Research Scholarship for Doctoral Studies
February 26, 2025
NLS faculty members Malini Chidambaram and Balu G Nair Awarded the Melbourne Research Scholarship to Pursue their PhDs at Melbourne Law School.
Malini Chidambaram, Assistant Professor of Law and Co-Director, Centre for Child and the Law and Balu G Nair, Assistant Professor of Law at NLSIU are headed to Melbourne Law School on Melbourne Research Scholarships.
About the Scholarship
Melbourne Law School accepts PhD applications in three rounds during the course of a year and accepts around 15 candidates every year. Malini and Balu were among the candidates selected this year.
Selection criteria
The Melbourne Research Scholarship is offered to students who are ranked highest by relevant selection panesl based on their academic results for previous study and their research potential in their field of study. Factors such as completion of a degree at the same level of the research course for which the scholarship is sought, relevant professional experience, refereed publications, specialist medical qualifications or composition of original music may be taken into consideration.
About Malini’s Research
As a part of her doctoral work, Malini will research how images bring into relation the state, child and law.
“A study of the tension between law and imagery in such initiatives will reveal the laden meanings of child rights in a Third World context,” said Malini.
Her research will draw from various sub-fields including child and the law, postcolonial feminist legal theory and development and aboriginal legal scholarship. She will attempt historise and answer the question: How do the meanings of child rights change in the ways in which images are deployed by a Third World state?
Malini looks forward to building on and extending the conversations at NLSIU — both inside and outside the classroom — with students and colleagues alike as she embarks on her doctoral research.
Her multi-year doctoral work begins in February 2025. Professor John Tobin and Dr Oishik Sircar. She has been awarded the Melbourne Research Scholarship, as well as the Newman College Rector’s Exhibition Scholarship to pursue her doctorate.
About Balu’s research
Balu will be looking at the nature and extent of government liability for Fundamental Rights violations in India. More specifically, he intends to examine whether the current remedial regime — which is almost exclusively centred around constitution law remedies — provides an adequate framework to address fundamental rights violations.
The project falls at the intersection of both public and private law, and is a continuation of some of the work that I have been doing in the recent past, including at NLSIU. In the November to January (2025) trimester, Balu had offered an elective at NLSIU titled ‘Government Liability in India’, touching upon many of the issues that he seeks to study in his PhD.
“The classroom discussions at NLS have played a critical role in my thinking around the subject and my decision to pursue the doctorate. In the course, I looked at the various safeguards – procedural, substantive and evidentiary – enjoyed by the government and its officers in India and how they shape behaviour within government agencies, as well as their impact on the ability of those affected by government actions to seek legal relief. In my PhD, I hope to continue this enquiry, using a mix of doctrinal and theoretical methods,” said Balu.
Balu will be commencing his PhD under the supervision of Professor Farrah Ahmed, Professor Katy Barnett and Associate Professor Lael Weis. He has been awarded the Melbourne Research Scholarship to pursue the PhD.
We wish both of them the very best for their academic journeys ahead!