Arushi Garg

Dr Arushi Garg

BA LLB-BCL MPhil DPhil FHEA

  • Position Governing Body Fellow
  • School Humanities and Social Sciences
  • Department Institute of Criminology
  • Email ag779@cam.ac.uk
  • Twitter @arushigarg90
  • Department link Law

Arushi is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge.

Arushi Garg

Prior to taking up the Assistant Professorship at Cambridge, Arushi held a lectureship at the University of Sheffield, and a series of fixed-term teaching positions at the University of Oxford, including a Stipendiary Lectureship in Law at St Hilda’s College. Before that, she read for the DPhil, MPhil and BCL at the University of Oxford (Hertford and Magdalen) as a Rhodes Scholar and a Mann Senior Scholar. Arushi completed her undergraduate degree in Law at NALSAR University and graduated with several gold medals and a mention on the Vice Chancellor’s merit list.

Arushi has published her research in a range of peer-reviewed journals, including Social and Legal Studies, the International Journal of Constitutional Law and the Socio-Legal Review. Her journal article on ‘deceptive sex’ cases [(2019) 28(6) Social & Legal Studies 737] won a research award from the Asian Law and Society Association. She is currently completing a manuscript based on her work in relation to rape and criminal justice, to be published as part of OUP’s Clarendon Studies in Criminology series. Her research projects have received generous support through internal and external grant funding – among others, from the British Society of Criminology.

Arushi is on the editorial board of the Indian Law Review and the Criminal Law Forum and is an auditor for the Asian Law and Society Association. She has served as a peer reviewer for a range of regional and international journals, book publishers and research councils, including the Economic and Social Research Council.

Arushi’s research deploys feminist and postcolonial theory to analyse the operation of the criminal justice system, particularly in India and other South Asian jurisdictions. She is especially interested in empirical analyses of law, and in what qualitative methods can teach us about the context and enforcement of the law.

She is currently focusing on three projects. First, Arushi is working on a monograph that analyses factors associated with acquittal and conviction in rape prosecutions in Delhi. Based on extensive qualitative fieldwork in Delhi trial courts, this will be the first published book-length manuscript to analyse the implementation of the wide-ranging rape law reform introduced in India in 2013.

Secondly, Arushi is working on a chapter that analyses the Indian Penal Code 1837 (‘IPC’), to be published as part of a larger book project [Chloë Kennedy and Lindsay Farmer (eds), Analysing Leading Works in Criminal Law (Routledge 2022)] The Indian Penal Code was drafted primarily by Thomas Macaulay as part of the British colonial apparatus for implementation across the former colonies. In many postcolonial countries, amended versions of the IPC remain in force. The IPC is thus remarkable in its longevity and geographical spread across the common law world. Accordingly, this chapter will analyse the IPC’s significance and legacy.

Thirdly, Arushi has a nascent but growing interest in the attitudinal and institutional factors that prosecutorial action in adversarial criminal justice systems. She is in the process of cleaning and analysing some data relating to prosecutorial action in India to develop this interest. If you are a prosecutor working in Indian trial courts and are interested in contributing to the development of these research plans, please do not hesitate to reach out to Arushi.

What's on

Image 'Barbarians under the rug' by Enej Gala

Art Exhibition: 'After News Before Bed'

20/04/2024 at 10.00

Visit Wolfson's latest exhibition 'After News Before Bed' featuring work by emerging artist Enej Gala, winner of the Wolfson Royal Academy Schools Graduate Prize.

Photo of speaker, Catherine Namono, on a rock during her research

'Sex'-on-the-rocks: Geometric rock art and musical expressions amongst the African Pygmy forest hunter-gatherers in search of 'balance', 'harmony'

22/04/2024 at 13.00


How does the interpretation of geometric rock art in Uganda shed light on the societal and cultural experiences of African Pygmy forest hunter-gatherers?

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Cambridge Science Park Visit

25/04/2024 at 11.00

Dive into the Cambridge innovation ecosystem with a visit to the Cambridge Science Park.

Multicolored silhouettes of human heads in a collage forming a concept of diversity or population.

The Place of Antigypsyism within Debates on Racism

25/04/2024 at 17.00

This event is the third of three roundtables that Wolfson's REACH Research Hub will be organising over the academic year under the heading ‘Hierarchies of Racism?’

Photograph of Senate house, Cambridge

Cambridge Past and Present

26/04/2024 at 13.30

Join Emeritus Fellow Dr Brian D Cox for a talk which will outline the development of the University from its origins in 1209 until the present day.

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