Biography

Gauri Pillai graduated with a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Oxford in 2022. Her doctoral thesis locates India as a player on the global stage for reproductive rights. Set against frantic negotiations on abortion across the world, she examines India’s (often ignored) contributions to the conversation, and how the Indian Constitution’s potential can be fully realised. She specifically interrogates what a discrimination law framing brings to the debate, and constructs a new ‘constitutional home’ for reproductive rights in India.

She is, currently, Assistant Professor (Law) at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, where she teaches Constitutional Law and Family Law. She is also Vice-Chair of Research and Faculty Chair for the Academic Fellow Programme. During her time at Oxford, she was Graduate Teaching Assistant on the Bachelor of Civil Law, teaching Comparative Equality and Human Rights Law. She was also Managing Editor of the Oxford Human Rights Hub. Before the DPhil, she read for the Bachelor of Civil Law at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. Gauri enjoys the process of writing and bringing her research to varied audiences.

At the EUI, apart from working on her monograph, Gauri will study why different constitutions (and courts) present different answers to certain seemingly universal questions on abortion. She asks what this reveals about constitutionalism, and whether it disrupts historically entrenched hierarchies within constitutional law.