युक्ती हीने विचारे तु धर्महानि प्रजायते

Somabha Bandopadhay

Bio-note

Somabha Bandopadhay is a Teaching Assistant at The West Bengal National University for Juridical Sciences (WBNUJS), Kolkata where she was formerly associated as a Research Assistant at the Centre for Regulatory Studies, Governance and Public Policy. She is pursuing active research and activism on transgender law and their rights. She pursued BA.LLB (International Law Honors) from School of Law, KIIT University, Bhubaneswar and pursued LLM (Human Rights) National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore. She has been a scholarship holder at KIIT University. She was awarded the Nani Palkhivala Memorial Gold Medal at NLSIU Bangalore for securing the highest in LLM (Human Rights) and the Chancellor’s Gold Medal and Nanibala Devi Memorial Gold Medal for securing in the highest in School of Law, KIIT University in 2018. Recently, Somabha has been awarded the Indo-Canadian Shastri Scholarship to pursue research on victimization of transgender persons and is preparing to undertake the comparative research soon.

Somabha won the prestigious Bar Council of India Inter-University Moot Court competition in 2017 and was adjudged as the Best speaker as well as the Best Female Advocate that ensured her a scholarship from the Council for a year. She has more than ten research publications to her credit including a few in Scopus indexed journals. Her paper “Agricultural Commons: Where Does India Stand?” was selected for presentation at Annual New York State Political Science Conference, Manhattan College, New York in 2020. Somabha was awarded the Best Paper Presentation Award at the Prof. N. R. Madhava Menon Legal Conference held at WBNUJS. She is regularly invited as panellist by Human Rights Law Network (HRLN) Kolkata and for lectures on topics like Human Rights Obligations and India, Need for Coronavirus Act in India and on research methodology by All India Reporter (AIR) and AIR Research Centre. She is presently pursuing a research on Glyphosate and Rights of Nature in collaboration with Earth Thrive, United Kingdom and another with WBNUJS, Kolkata on Transgender trauma and stigma. She is a member of the GARN Youth Hub, Ecuador and World Youths for Climate Justice and is passionately working on Rights of Nature. She also serves in the advisory boards of various organisations.