Ayesha Pattnaik

Ayesha Pattnaik is a DPhil candidate at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, supervised by Professor Fernanda Pirie. Through a multi-sited ethnography, she researches India's internal informal migrants experiences of law and citizenship as they travel across state borders.

Previously, Ayesha worked in the research wing of the NGO PRADAN where she conducted academic and policy-oriented research for projects on migration, sustainable food systems, women’s collective action, and rural development in India. Prior to that, she has experience as a research associate with Kyoto University on the interdisciplinary project TAPESTRY, where she conducted ethnographic fieldwork and archival research studying India’s marginal environments with high climate change uncertainty.

Ayesha read an MSc. in Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she was also a research assistant for the LSE South Asia Centre. She completed her undergraduate degree in Sociology and Anthropology with a minor in Political Science from Ashoka University.

She is currently an editor at Frontiers of Socio-Legal Studies. She frequently writes for academic journals, blogs, and news platforms. A list of her publications is available here.