Gopika Solanki
Identity politics; Indigeneity and politics; Law and society; Cultural pluralism and intercultural accommodation; State-society relations; Gender and politics
| Degrees: | MA (Tata Institute of Social Sciences) PhD (McGill University) |
| Email: | gopika.solanki@carleton.ca |
| Office: | C674 Loeb Building |
Associate Professor
Gopika Solanki’s research straddles disciplines of Political Science, Legal Anthropology, Women’s Studies, and Law. Her research interests include gender and politics, state-society relations, cultural pluralism and citizenship, legal pluralism and judicial politics, ethnicity, religion and politics, criminal law and governance, and South Asian politics. She is the author of Adjudication in Religious Family Laws: Cultural Accommodation, Legal Pluralism, and Gender Equality in India (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and the co-author of Journey from Violence to Crime: A Study of Domestic Violence in the City of Mumbai.
Gopika Solanki has been awarded a SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant for the research project titled “Counting on Adivasi women leaders: How electoral quotas shape ecological governance in Maharashtra, India.” The project aims to generate insights on Adivasi women’s localized leadership. It is a designed in partnership with the Resource and Support Centre for Development (RSCD), a Mumbai-based organization that provides training and support to women leaders elected through gender quotas in Western India. Gopika Solanki has been invited by the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office, Government of Cambodia, to serve on their law reform commission as an international legal expert on religious laws.
She is currently working on book project on indigeneity, politics and the law. The book is tentatively titled “The Split Personality of Law: Political Decentralization, Gender, and Adivasi Legal Mobilization in Western India.”
Selected Publications
Solanki, Gopika and Kalindi Kokal. Forthcoming. “Hindu Marriage: ‘Sacrament vs Contract,’ A Legal Conundrum” In Nichols, Joel and Karin Carmit Yefet edited, Research Handbook on Family Law and Religion. Cheltenham: Elgar Edward.
Solanki, Gopika. 2023. “Governing Hindu Marriage or Interreligious Marriage?: Secularism from Below and State-Society Relations in the Adjudication of Marriage in India.” Journal of Legal Pluralism and Critical Social Analysis 55(2): 293-317.
Solanki, Gopika. 2023. “Transgressive Spaces: Women’s Organizations and Intentional Interventions in Politics of Inter-religious Marriages” in Michael edited “Religions, Mumbai Style: Events, Media, Spaces.” Delhi: Oxford University Press. Chapter 8.
Solanki, Gopika. 2018. “Adjudication in a Pluralized Legal Field: Proposing Communication as an Analytical Device.” In Kyriaki Topidi ed., Normative Pluralism and Human Rights: Social Normativities in Conflict. London: Routledge. Chapter 13.
Solanki, Gopika and Geetanjali Gangoli (2016) “Defining Domestic Violence and Women’s Autonomy in Law.” The Socio-Legal Review 12(1): 51-80.
Solanki, Gopika (2015). “Invoking Human Rights: Dalits and the Politics of Caste Violence in India.” In Peetush, Ashwani, and Jay Drydyk, eds., Human Rights: India and the West. Delhi: Oxford University Press. 256-292.
Solanki, Gopika (2011). Adjudication in Religious Family Laws: Cultural Accommodation, Legal Pluralism, and Gender Equality in India. Cambridge, Delhi, and New York: Cambridge University Press.
Reviews for this book: Law and Politics Book Review; Feminist Legal Studies; Law and Society Review; Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice; Berkeley Journal of International Law; South Asia Research; Südasien-Chronik – South Asia Chronicle 5/2015