The Law School is proud to announce that Arvind Narrain, former postgraduate law student at the University of Warwick has been named as the inaugural recipient of our Dwijen Rangnekar award for contributions to social justice. The award was established to honour our former colleague, and friend Dr Dwijen Rangnekar, who worked as an Associate Professor of Law at Warwick before his untimely death in 2015.

Arvind Narrain completed his LLM in Law in Development from the University of Warwick in 1999, graduating in 2000. He has been a committed social justice lawyer and was a founding member of the Alternative Law Forum (ALF), Bangalore, India. ALF provides legal support to people marginalised owing to their class, race, caste, gender, disability or sexuality. Arvind has contributed immensely to the decriminalisation of homosexuality in India. He played a prominent role in the research, civil society activism and proceedings before the Supreme Court of India regarding the same.

Arvind’s interventions are not just limited to India, he has been a vocal advocate of the issues pertaining to the LGBT community at the international level and is presently Director of Research and Practice at ARC International, Geneva which represents LGBT issues before the Human Rights Council. His publications include Human Rights Lawyering in India (with Uma Saumya) (Alternative Law Forum 2017) and Law Like Love (with Alok Gupta) (Yoda Press 2011).

Arvind is expected to visit the University later this year to present at the Dwijen Rangnekar Memorial lecture in May 2020. Please check our events calendar for more details of this event once they are confirmed.

We will be launching our call for nominations for the 2020/21 award shortly. Find out more on our website.