Kalpana Kannabiran is a sociologist and legal scholar based in Hyderabad, India, whose work focuses on the intersections of constitutional studies, human rights, sociology, law, literature, gender studies, and social movements.
A rights educator for communities in struggle, she has worked closely with social movements and advocacy groups over three decades, on initiatives for legal and constitutional literacy. She has published over 20 books with leading publishers, and led major research projects on gender studies, adivasi rights, disability rights, and regional studies, to name a few.
Among her publications are the following: Tools of Justice: Non-Discrimination and the Indian Constitution (2012), and Law, Justice and Human Rights in India: Short Reflections (2021). She has edited and translated The Speaking Constitution: A Sisyphean Life in Law by KG Kannabiran (2022) and is editor of Routledge Readings on Law and Social Justice (2022) and Routledge Readings on Law, Development and Legal Pluralism (2022). Most recently she co-edited a compilation of selections from Telugu literature in translation in English as part of the Dakshinayan Indian Thought Series titled Voices of Resistance: Telugu Progressive-Political Literature (2023). An independent human rights columnist, Dr. Kannabiran is recipient of the VKRV Rao Prize for Social Science Research in 2003, and the Amartya Sen Award for Distinguished Social Scientists in 2012, both awarded by ICSSR in recognition of her work in the field of interdisciplinary law. She served a 3 year term as Civil Society Advisory Governor (Asia), Commonwealth Foundation, London from January 2020 to December 2022. She is currently President of Research Committee 05: Racism, Nationalism, Indigeneity and Ethnicity, International Sociological Association, 2023-2027.