SD

Sagnik Dutta (Ph.D.)

Cluster of Excellence „Transforming Human Rights”

Research associates

Contact

Sagnik Dutta (he/ they) is a researcher at the FAU Profile Center for Human Rights Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU CHREN). Their current research focuses on legal responses to digital surveillance in India and South Africa. Their research broadly encompasses the fields of digitalisation, human rights, securitisation, minority rights, gender, and postcolonial/ decolonial theory and brings together the disciplines of political science and anthropology. Their recent work has explored the concepts of digital and data sovereignty in India, regulation of the metaverse, online hate speech etc. Their work has been published in various peer-reviewed journals and their monograph has been published with Cambridge University Press and supported by grants of Tilburg University, the University of Amsterdam, and Leiden University. They hold a PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Cambridge, a Masters in South Asian Area Studies from the School of African and Area Studies, and a BA (English Hons, History, and Philosophy) from the University of Calcutta.

Dr Dutta Sagnik CV

Monograph

  • Dutta, S. (2025). In the shadow of minority rights: decolonising gender, liberalism, and the politics of difference, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Edited Volume

  • Abbas, T., Bergh, S. I., & Dutta, S. (Eds.). (2025). Counterterrorism in a global context: A decolonial approach. Manchester University Press.

Articles (peer-reviewed)

  • Dutta, S. & Shahin, S. (Forthcoming). Regulating the Metaverse: How to approach a ‘user-centred approach’ to digital policymaking. Internet Policy Review.
  • Dutta, S., Mazumdar, S., & McInerney, K. (2026). Introduction: Rethinking data colonialism: Local negotiations with data, postcoloniality, and power. Big Data & Society, 13(3).
  • Dutta, S., & Mazumdar, S. (2025). Our data, ourselves: Participation, justice, and alternative futures of data sovereignty in India. Big Data & Society, 12(3).
  • Dutta, S., & Abbas, T. (2024). Protecting the people: populism and masculine security in India and Hungary. Journal of Political Ideologies, pp. 1-23.
  • Finden, A. & Dutta, S. (2024). Counterterrorism, political anxiety and legitimacy in postcolonial India and Egypt. Critical Studies on Terrorism.
  • Dutta, S. (2023). Polygamy and the porous state: reconstituting gender in the everyday life of Muslim law. Legal Pluralism and Critical Social Analysis, pp. 1-21.
  • Dutta, S. (2022). Competing Allies: Legal Pluralism, and Gendered Agency in Mumbai’s Sharia Courts. Law & Social Inquiry, 47(2), pp. 514-534.
  • Dutta, S. (2021). Becoming Equals: The Meaning and Practice of Gender Equality in an Islamic Feminist Movement in India. Feminist Theory.
  • Dutta, S. (2021). Divorce, Kinship, and Errant Wives: Islamic Feminism in India, and the Everyday Life of Divorce and Maintenance. Ethnicities, 21(3), pp. 454–476.
  • Dutta, S. (2017). From Accommodation to Substantive Equality: Muslim Personal Law, Secular Law, and the Indian Constitution 1985–2015. Asian Journal of Law and Society, 4(1), pp. 191-227.