Meet our new faculty member | Prerna Dhoop
April 6, 2021
We are pleased to welcome another new faculty member to our University this term. Prerna Dhoop has recently joined NLSIU as Assistant Professor of Law and will be teaching Contract Law. Prior to joining NLS, she worked as an Assistant Professor of Law at NALSAR, Hyderabad, and as a Research Assistant at Duke Law School and at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata. She has also worked as a Policy clerk with the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), Washington DC.
We asked her to share more about herself, her academic interests and her recent work.
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?
I was born and brought up in Kolkata. I did my schooling from Our Lady Queen of the Missions School where I expended most of my energies in sports and dramatics and the remaining in academics.
I completed my BBA.LL.B from KIIT University School of Law, Bhubaneswar and LLM from Duke University School of Law, USA. I am grateful to my wonderful teachers at KIIT and Duke; I developed a keen interest in the study of law and what it means to the most vulnerable and weakest members of the society. Since my law school days, I garnered the dream of becoming a teacher.
Thereafter, I worked as Edwin C. Baker Policy Clerk at NCLR, Washington DC and Research Assistant at West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), Kolkata under ‘Sir Justice Asutosh Mookerjee Chair on Tradition, Law & Social Transformation in Bengal’. From 2016 onwards, I worked as an Assistant Professor at National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR) University, Hyderabad.
What are your main areas of teaching? How did your interest in these areas begin?
The main focus of my research and teaching are comparative constitutional law, legal theory and international human rights law.
As a law student in 2009, I along with my two batch-mates at KIIT lobbied the Chief Election Commissioner of India to examine the ‘Right of Self-Identification’ of transgender individuals in India. The concerted efforts to pursue their cause resulted in the Government of India’s official decision of assigning a distinct gender identity to the one million transgender population, in the Voter Identity cards.
At Duke, I was a participant in the International Human Rights Clinic which assisted the United Nations in developing basic principles on the right to an effective remedy for victims of human trafficking, especially women and children. At NALSAR, I taught courses like Legal Methods, Law and Poverty; Administrative Law; Law and Justice in a Globalizing World; LGBT Impact Litigation and Comparative Public Law.
The importance of Contract Law in your opinion:
Contract Law is a fundamental course for the first year law students and introduces them to some key legal concepts in private commercial law such as formation of agreements; rights and obligations of the parties; performance of duties and frustration; enforceability of agreements and the apparent tension prevailing between market individualism and consumer welfarism. It lays the foundation for their successful careers and I look forward to a fruitful engagement.
Your thoughts on starting your teaching journey at NLS? What are your plans ahead?
I am very happy to join the NLSIU family. I seek to translate my interest and love for law and academic writing into meaningful legal scholarship and inculcate critical thinking skills among law students so that together we are able to build a more equal and just society.