Vasudha works in the Law and Critical Legal Theory Initiative at Anveshi, on a project titled 'Feminist Politics, Rights Discourse, the Family and Sexuality: Rethinking Women’s Suffering and Agency.' She is a practicing lawyer in the Family Courts in Hyderabad defending women in various registers of marital rights and obligations. Vasudha’s primary interests are in engaging with questions of women’s negotiations with the law. She is a member of the Anveshi Executive Committee.
Vasudha works in the Law and Critical Legal Theory Initiative at Anveshi, on a project titled 'Feminist Politics, Rights Discourse, the Family and Sexuality: Rethinking Women’s Suffering and Agency.' Vasudha has a law degree from the Osmania University, Hyderabad. She is a practicing lawyer in the Family Courts in Hyderabad defending women in various registers of marital rights and obligations. Vasudha’s primary interests are in engaging with questions of women’s negotiations with the courts.
Vasudha has completed other research projects with Anveshi. Between 2000-2002, the project 'Contextualizing Criminality: Convicted Women’s Narratives and Procedures of the Criminal Trial' juxtaposed the experiences of convicted women and the codes in which the criminal justice system selectively sets up evidence to judge criminality. In 2000-2003, she was also involved in another project 'Institutional Responses to Domestic Violence' that foregrounded how women’s needs to retain the affective ties of their family always remain outside the codes and mandates of legal institutions.
Vasudha worked with human rights lawyer K. Balagopal during 2003-2005. Alongside this, she studied the functioning and infrastructure of Family Courts in Andhra Pradesh, as part of a project commissioned by the National Law School, Bangalore, and Majlis, Mumbai in 2004-2005. Recently, she has investigated the usefulness of Cooperative Societies Law in the context of proposals to revive cooperative societies in the handloom industry in Andhra Pradesh. This was part of a larger project undertaken by Dastakar, Andhra in 2006.
Select Publications:
- 'A Difficult Match: Women’s Actions and Legal Institutions in the Face of Domestic Violence.' Economic and Political Weekly, October, 2006. Co-author.
- 'Adjudicating (un)Domestic Battles: The New Domestic Violence Law.' Economic and Political Weekly, September, 2005. Co-author.