Warwick Law School News

Warwick Law School welcomes a new Assistant Professor to our community.

Prior to joining Warwick, Ira Chadha Sridhar was the Hatton-WYNG Junior Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge. During her Fellowship, she worked on a book 'Care and the Mandate of Medical LawLink opens in a new window' (soon to be published by OUP), while also teaching Jurisprudence and Tort Law to undergraduate students. She did her PhD in legal philosophy at Cambridge, as well as her LLM.

When asked about joining Warwick Law School as a faculty member, Ira told us:

"I am delighted to be joining Warwick! As someone who works at the interface of law and philosophy, Warwick’s commitment to understanding (and teaching) law in its wider theoretical and political context, its excellent community of scholars in legal and moral philosophy, and its wider interest in critical approaches to law all make it an incredible fit. I’m excited to meet colleagues and have conversations about work and ideas — the few I’ve met already have been really lovely!"

We chatted some more...

What will you be doing at Warwick?

Together with other colleagues, I’ll be teaching Tort Law this year, and contributing to Understanding Law in Context and the Jurisprudence module. I will also be Co-Director of the ECR Network, and will be part of CELPA – which, in my mind, is one of the most exciting research clusters in law and philosophy internationally.

What are your research interests?

I work on issues in law and philosophy, with a particular focus on the philosophy of care. That means I’m interested in really fundamental questions in moral philosophy and meta-ethics about the concept of care: what kind of concept is it? What does it mean to care? How do we tell good care from bad care? Why do we have responsibilities to care? And so on. These are foundational questions for philosophers, but I think they also carry important legal significance. So I basically work along two tracks. As a philosopher of care, I seek to clarify the concept of care itself and some of the foundational tenets of feminist care ethics, which is my primary theoretical entry point into care. As a legal scholar, I bring these philosophical insights to bear on areas of law where the concept of care carries particular legal significance. In terms of doctrine, I work primarily in tort law and medical law, with a particular focus on the point where they intersect: medical negligence. More broadly, I write in general jurisprudence -- on what I call the ‘legal’ concept of care, on problems in law and language, and on political obligation.

Why did you want to study law?

I studied law at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences in Kolkata, India. I turned to law because I thought – rather naively, perhaps – that I would pursue a career in legal practice that would allow me to fight the inequalities I saw around me. I studied jurisprudence during my third year of law school, and it gave theoretical expression to something I had known intuitively by then: that law is, of course, limited, and that questions of the good and the just are far more complicated than is often let on. A well-kept secret! Hence my journey into philosophy – which, as academic disciplines go, is annoyingly addictive once you get started.

University can be very stressful, what do you do to unwind?

I really need to get better at unwinding! But I basically spend a lot of time with my friends and family, take long walks, read a lot, try to go see good art when I can, and really enjoy painting – something which I hope to be able to do more of now that I have respite from the academic job market!

Professor Andrew Williams, Head of School has said: "I’m very pleased to welcome our new colleagues to the law school. I am sure they will make a significant contribution to our community in the years ahead."

Good luck in your first term Ira, we are thrilled to have you with us.

Find out more about Ira's researchLink opens in a new window.