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Dr Prakash A Shah, LLB (LSE) LLM (LSE) PhD (SOAS)

Prakash A

Reader in Culture and Law

Email: prakash.shah@qmul.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7882 3971
Room Number: Mile End

Profile

Dr Prakash Shah's research concerns the fields of law, culture, religion, caste, and migration. He is especially interested in the research programme on the Comparative Science of Cultures established by Professor S.N. Balagangadhara. In the past decade, he has closely worked on the laws concerning caste in various jurisdictions. He is a regular participant in media coverage of current affairs to do with India, Indians abroad, and religion, among other issues. He is the editor of the Routledge Series on Cultural Diversity and Law and part of the editorial team of the Brill book series Annotated Legal Documents on Islam in Europe. He is a member of the Peer Review College of the Arts and Humanities Board. He is also chair of the Queen Mary School of Law Postgraduate Exam Board. 

Undergraduate Teaching

  • LAW6461 Law in Asia
  • LAW4658 Cultural Diversity and Law
  • LAW6460 Law and Religion.

Postgraduate Teaching

Research

Publications

Dr Shah’s main Publications include:

Authored Books

  • Annotated legal documents on Islam in Europe: United Kingdom. Leiden: Brill (forthcoming).
  • Against caste in British law: A critical perspective on the caste discrimination provision in the Equality Act 2010. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015.
  • Legal pluralism in conflict: Coping with cultural diversity in law. London: Glass House, 2005.
  • Refugees, race and the legal concept of asylum in Britain. London: Cavendish, 2000.

Edited Books

  • Western foundations of the caste system. Basingstoke: Palgrave/Springer, 2017 (co-editor with Martin Farek, Dunkin Jalki and Sufiya Pathan).
  • Family, religion and law: Cultural encounters in Europe. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014 [Cultural Diversity and Law series in Association with RELIGARE] (with Marie-Claire Foblets and Mathias Rohe).
  • Legal practice and cultural diversity. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009 (joint editor).
  • Law and ethnic plurality: Socio-legal perspectives. Leiden and Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 2007.
  • The challenge of asylum to legal systems. London: Cavendish, 2005.
  • United Kingdom asylum law in its European context. London: Platinium Publishing and Group for Ethnic Minority Studies, SOAS, 1999 (with Curtis Francis Doebbler).

Recent Journal Articles

‘The co-dependence of Orientalism and the social sciences: Durkheim on religion in India’. In: History of the Human Sciences (open access, forthcoming).

A review article of India and in the Eyes of the Europeans, by Martin Farek. In: Vol. 71 Numen: International Review for the History of Religions, pp. 315-322.  

‘Caste studies today: Imaginary victims and perpetrators’. In: (2023) Vol. 13, No. 1 Onati Socio-Legal Studies, pp. 1-28

‘Caste in a new light: Jati in British multiculturalism’. In: (2023) Vol. 13, No. 1 Onati Socio-Legal Studies, pp. 156-187 (link)

‘Are there Asian diasporic laws in Britain? Reconsidering the presuppositions of legal pluralism’. In: (2020) No. 1 Quaderni di diritto e politica ecclesiastica, pp. 201-220.

‘Secularism's threat to tradition: A reading of Europe, India and the Limits of Secularism’. In: (2019) Sikh Formations.

‘Orientalism, Multiculturalism, and Identity Politics: Hindus and the British caste law’. In: (2017) Quaderni di Diritto e Politica Ecclesiastica (special issue: Daimon. Diritto comparato delle religioni), pp. 343-357

‘“An ancient system of caste”: How the British law against caste depends on Orientalism’. In: (2015) Vol. 17 Theatrum Historiae, pp. 119-141

‘Sacerdotal violence and the caste system: The long shadow of Christian-orientalism’. In: No. 41, Summer 2015, The Journal of Contemporary Thought (Special Issue on Critical Humanities), pp. 137-164.  

‘The difference that religion makes: Transplanting legal ideas from the West to Japan and India’. In: (2015) Vol. 10, Issue 1, Asian Journal of Comparative Law, pp. 81-97.

‘Asking about reasonable accommodation in England’. In: (June-September 2013)Vol. 13, Nos. 2-3 International Journal of Discrimination and the Law, pp. 83-112.  

‘In pursuit of the pagans: Muslim law in the English context’. In: (2013) Vol. 45, No. 1 Journal of Legal Pluralism, pp. 58-75. Reproduced in Livia Holden (ed.) (2015): Legal Pluralism and Governance in South Asia and Diasporas. London: Routledge, pp. 58-75.

Recent Book Chapters

  • ‘Cultures of memory in The Kashmir Files’. In: Kolluri L. (ed.) Questions of the literary: Discourse, institution and context. New Delhi: Shakti Publications, pp. 143-154 (forthcoming).
  • ‘Immigration Law’. In: A. Mistri, R. Selim and B. Das (eds.): Key concepts in migration study. Routledge India (forthcoming).
  • ‘Culture in the throes of law’. In: Luis Efrèn, Ilenia Ruggiu, Irene Spigno (eds.): Justice and culture: Theory and practice of the use of culture. Naples: Editoriale Scientifica, 2020, pp. 35-54.
  • ‘Sacerdotal violence and the caste system: The long shadow of Christian-orientalism’. In: D. Venkat Rao (ed.): Critical humanities from India. Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge, 2018, pp. 117-148.  
  • 'Dissimulating on Caste in British Law'. In: Martin Farek, Dunkin Jalki and Sufiya Pathan and Prakash Shah (eds.) Western foundations of the caste system. Basingstoke: Palgrave/Springer, 2017, pp. 85-126.
  • ‘Provincializing Durkheim’s religion’. In Werner Gephardt and Daniel Witte (eds): The Sacred and the Law: The Durkheimian Legacy. Vittorio Klosterman, 2017, pp. 283-299.  
  • ‘South Asian Legal Systems and Families in Foreign Courts: The British Case’. In: Garimella, Sai Ramani and Stellina Jolly (eds.): Private International Law and South Asian States’ Practice. Singapore: Springer Singapore, 2017, pp. 3-18.
  • ‘Private international law, Muslim transnational legal pluralism, and the undermining of official law in the British Isle'. In: Roberto Toniatti and Davide Strazzari (eds.): Legal pluralism in Europe and the ordre public exception: Normative and judicial perspectives. Trento: Universita degli Studi di Trento, 2016, pp. 17-38.
  • ‘Legal responses to religious diversity (or to cultural diversity)?’ In: Silvio Ferrari (ed.): Routledge Handbook of Law and Religion. London: Routledge, 2015, pp. 119-132.
  • ‘Distorting minority laws? Religious diversity and European legal systems’. In: Prakash Shah with Marie-Claire Foblets and Mathias Rohe (eds.): Family, religion and law: Cultural encounters in Europe. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014 [Cultural Diversity and Law series in Association with RELIGARE], pp. 1-27.
  • ‘Shari‘a in the West: Colonial consciousness in a context of normative competition’. In: Elisa Giunchi (ed.): Islamic family law in the courts: experiences from Europe, Australia and North America. London: Routledge, 2014, pp. 14-31.

Supervision

Dr Shah welcomes doctoral research proposals on his areas of interest and especially students who want to work on the research programme on the Comparative Science of Cultures established by Professor S.N. Balagangadhara.

Current and past PhD students

  • Bahar Kutluktemur, The effects of migrants from Turkey in light of the post-Brexit lapse of the Ankara agreement, September 2024-.
  • Atharva Sontakke, 1st year, State control of temples in India, September 2023-. Atharva is a faculty member at Jindal Global Law School, India.
  • Puangrat Patomsirirak: Thai citizens abroad and their right to return: the emergence of a temporary semi-citizen in the time of pandemics, September 2020-. Puangrat is a faculty member at Thammasat University, Thailand.
  • Esin Calsikan: Burdened Recognition: Alevis within the politico-legal framework of Turkey, the United Kingdom and the European court of human rights, July 2020
  • Sarah Singer: Terrorism and Exclusion from Refugee Status in the UK, passed 2014
  • Latif Tas: Legal Pluralism and Dispute Resolution among Kurds in London, passed Feb 2013
  • Erica Howard: The EU Race Directive, passed April 2007
  • Ivan Leonidov: Comparative and International Legal Study on the Position of Irregular Migrants in the United Kingdom, Russia and South Africa, passed June 2005

Public Engagement

Dr Shah is sought for comment on current affairs especially to do with India, Indians abroad and religious affairs. He also writes on Substack. 

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