Main Focus
- Pedagogical and research practices in the field of legal history in India
- Colonial law and practices of jurisdiction in the British Empire in the long 19th century
- Law and minority governance
- Frontiers and borderlands
Projects
Curriculum Vitae
Head of Centre for Legal History in India
Dr Reeju Ray was trained as a historian at Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University, and received her PhD in History from Queen’s University, Canada. She has previously taught at O.P. Jindal Global University and the University of Toronto, Canada, and held a SSHRC-funded postdoctoral position at the University of Western Ontario. Her monograph, Placing the Frontier in British North East India: Law, Custom, and Knowledge, was published by Oxford University Press in 2023. Her research interest spans South Asian history, legal history, indigenous studies, queer histories, and borderland studies.
At mpilhlt between 2024 and 2025, Ray worked on a project titled ‘Institutional Cooperation with India in the Field of Legal History in India’, which identified key actors and institutions engaged in knowledge production in legal history and examined the discipline’s breadth, scope, and limitations. The Centre for Legal History in India (CLHI) builds on the networks and collaborative agreements established during this project.
In addition to heading the activities of CLHI, Ray is currently working on a research project titled ‘The Ins and Outs of Jurisdiction, 1726–1935’. The project has three components. First, it examines the spatial infrastructure of legal institutions such as the Company courts and their jurisdictional reach, beginning in the Presidency towns and expanding through the 18th to mid-19th centuries. Second, it traces 19th-century laws, regulations, and legislative reforms that defined legal subjects through racial, geographic, and other forms of exclusion. Third, it assesses public debates, opinions, and influences surrounding the application of exclusionary laws and the creation of excluded spaces of jurisdiction following the legislative reforms in the Government of India Acts of 1919 and 1935. She is currently writing a book chapter titled Legal Reform and Minority (in) Law, and revising an article title ‘Exclusion in Three Acts: 1874, 1919, 1935’.
Academic Record
2008 – 2013
Ph.D. History, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada
2005 – 2007
M.A. Modern History, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
2002 – 2005
B.A. with Honors, History, Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University, New Delhi, India
Work Experience
2019 –
Associate Professor of History and Assistant Dean International Collaboration, O.P. Jindal Global University, India
2015 – 2017
SSHRC Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Department of Gender Sexuality and Women’s Studies, University of Western Ontario
2013 – 2018
Sessional Lecturer, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, University of Toronto
2012 – 2013
Intern, School of Graduate Studies (SGS), Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada
2008 – 2014
Teaching Fellow and Teaching Assistant, History Department, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada
Awards and Honors
- Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, elected 2024
- Visiting Researcher, Max Planck Institute of Legal History and Legal Theory 2023
- Max Planck Institute of Legal History and Legal Theory Bursary for the Third Legal Histories of Empires Conference at Maynooth University, July 2022
- Research Associate, York Center of Asian Research, York University, Canada, 2017–2019
- SSHRC Post-Doctoral Research Associate, Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, University of Western Ontario, 2015 – 2017
- Visiting Fellow, Centre for Northeast Studies and Policy Research Jamia Milia Islamia University, New Delhi, 2016
- Annual Award of Excellence for a Doctoral Thesis, Department of History, Queen’s University, 2014
- Dean’s Award, School of Graduate Studies, Queen’s University, 2013
- Queen’s University Graduate Award and International Tuition Award, 2008–2013
- Alan Bray Scholarship, Birkbeck College, University of London, 2010
- Huntley MacDonald Sinclair Travelling Scholarship Queen’s University, 2010
- Timothy C.S. Frank Research Scholarship, Queen’s University, 2010
- Union Grants Commission Fellowship, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2007–2008
- ubuEuropean and Comparative