Participant Info

First Name
Mitra
Last Name
Sharafi
Country
United States
State
WI Wisconsin
Affiliation
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Website URL
http://hosted.law.wisc.edu/wordpress/sharafi/#
Keywords
South Asian legal history, colonialism and empire, law and religion, law and science, law and minorities, forensic science, legal profession, history of law books
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
On leave in academic year 2020-21 (Sept.2020-May 2021)
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

I’m a legal historian of modern South Asia, focusing on 19th and 20th-century India. I am trained as a lawyer and a historian. My first book was a study of law, religion, and minority legal culture. I am currently working on a book on forensic science in colonial India. I’m also writing articles on Indian law students at the Inns of Court (London), the forensic analysis of blood stains, and abortion in colonial India. I host South Asian Legal History Resources and Stationary Empire, and I blog for the Legal History Blog. For recent online interviews (written), here is my AHA Member Spotlight and XQs with Chapati Mystery. For audio, here is a New Books Network conversation about my first book. For video, here is a presentation I gave at Harvard Law School (15:30+).

Recent Publications
  • Book: Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia: Parsi Legal Culture, 1772-1947 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), with South Asian edition (Ranikhet, India: Permanent Black, 2017)
  • Article: “Parsi Life Writing: Memoirs and Family Histories of Modern Zoroastrians” in A. Hintze and A. Williams, eds, Holy Wealth: Accounting for This World and the Next in Religious Belief and Practice. Festschrift for John R. Hinnells (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2017), 251-77
  • Article: “South Asian Legal History,” Annual Rev. of Law and Social Science 11 (2015), 309-3
  • Article: “Law in Modern Zoroastrianism” in M. Stausberg and Y. Vevaina, eds., The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Zoroastrianism (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2015), 299-312
  • Article: “Two Lives in Law: The Reminiscences of A. J. C. Mistry and Sir Norman Macleod, 1884-1926” in D. Y. Chandrachud, Anoop V. Mohta and Roshan S. Dalvi, eds., A Heritage of Judging: The Bombay High Court through 150 Years (Mumbai: Maharashtra Judicial Academy, 2012), 258-83
  • Article: “The Marital Patchwork of Colonial South Asia: Forum Shopping from Britain to Baroda,” Law and History Rev. 28: 4 (2010), 979-1009
  • Article: “Judging Conversion to Zoroastrianism: Behind the Scenes of the Parsi Panchayat Case (1908)” in J. R. Hinnells and A. Williams, ed. Parsis in India and the Diaspora (London: Routledge Curzon, 2007), 159-80
Media Coverage
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-34322117; https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/many-think-parsis-are-a-model-minority-are-they/articleshow/60759044.cms; http://www.startribune.com/the-changing-face-of-the-legal-profession/292122451/
Country Focus
India
Expertise by Geography
Asia
Expertise by Chronology
19th century, Modern, 20th century
Expertise by Topic
Colonialism, Law, Libraries & Archives, Religion, Science