Mayur Suresh is a Reader in Law at SOAS University of London, specializing in legal anthropology, socio-legal studies, and the ethnography of criminal court processes in South Asia. He holds a B.A. LL.B. (Hons) from the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), an LL.M. from Columbia Law School, and a Ph.D. in law from Birkbeck, University of London. Before transitioning to academia, Suresh practiced law in Delhi, managing trial-level criminal defense and public interest litigation—notably serving as part of the legal team in the landmark Naz Foundation case that challenged India’s colonial-era anti-homosexuality law (Section 377).
His scholarship departs from traditional doctrinal analysis, integrating anthropological and ethnographic methods to investigate the everyday realities, mundane technicalities, and lived experiences of courtrooms operating within settings of state hardening and authoritarian governance. His monograph, Terror Trials: Life and Law in Delhi’s Courts (Fordham University Press, 2023), provides a critical examination of how terrorism trials unfold within trial-level proceedings. Highlighting his international research impact, he was awarded a prestigious Leverhulme Research Leadership Award to fund his comparative project exploring the social life of law and legal practice under authoritarian regimes. His work offers a grounded, empirical perspective on how legal practitioners and defendants inhabit the technicalities of criminal law in politically volatile environments.