Get to know former LSA Board Trustee Deepa Das Acevedo!
Institution:
Emory University School of Law
Number of years as LSA member:
I believe 15, but honestly I am no longer sure!
Number of LSA Meetings Attended:
Eight that I can remember offhand – Chicago, Denver, Puerto Rico, Lisbon, DC, Toronto, Mexico City, and New Orleans
LSA Governance Position(s) and Committees:
Board of Trustees, Class of 2024
Chair, Budget and Finance Committee | 2022 – 2023
Co-Chair, CRN 08: Labor Rights |roughly 2018 – 2022
Member, International Activities Committee | 2019 – 2021
Other Association Affiliations:
American Anthropological Association
Association for Political and Legal Anthropology
Association of American Law Schools
American Society of Comparative Law
Colloquium on Scholarship in Employment and Labor Law (COSELL)
Areas of Research:
Constitutional Ethnography
Gig Work Regulation
Academic Labor
Judicial Reforms
Favorite Topics to Teach or Research:
Research: Toss-up between “Indian Secularism” (a term I took issue with in my first published article!) and Faculty Tenure as a Contractual Protection
Teaching: Also a toss-up, between Law & Policy of India (first generalist survey course of Indian law & judicial system taught in a U.S. law school) and Employment Law
Unique Skill or Fact:
I trained as a bartender as a way to relieve stress from being on the academic job market. I want to get licensed locally to tend bar occasionally, but just as I clear my plate enough to do it, we move. Notwithstanding many years of experimentation, my favorite everyday cocktail remains a *not* bone-dry (gin) martini, and my favorite special occasion cocktail remains a Boulevardier.
Additional Hobbies:
Cooking (lately I’ve been trying to recreate my aunt’s famous homemade Indian pickles) and, less commonly, quilting
Notable Awards and Grants:
Advance Grantee, Law and Society Association | 2025 -2026
Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellow, United States Department of State | 2023 – 2024
Religion & Journalism Fellow, Henry Luce Foundation & American Council of Learned Societies | 2020 – 2021
Franklin Research Grantee, American Philosophical Society | 2019 – 2020
International Dissertation Research Fellow, Social Science Research Fellowship | 2010 – 2011
Top Books and/or Publications:
The War on Tenure (Cambridge University Press, 2025)
The Battle for Sabarimala (Oxford University Press, 2024)
“Secularism in the Indian Context” (Law & Social Inquiry, 2013)
Education:
Ph.D., University of Chicago | Anthropology
J.D., University of Chicago
AB, Princeton | Politics
Major Appearances:
Television: 11 Alive, Spectrum TV, KMSP-TV
Podcasts: College Matters, Doing Sociology, Heterodox Academy, I-CONnect, Keen on America, New Books Network, New Legal Realism, Political Philosophy, Tea for Teaching, The Square Circle
What do you find the most beneficial about being an LSA member?
LSA is where I can be all the things—an anthropologist, a legal scholar, someone who studies work law, constitutional law, religious freedom, higher education—everything. The Association’s “big tent” approach to scholarship is rare and valuable given academia’s natural tendency towards specialization, and it is something that makes me feel simultaneously comforted, excited, and challenged. We are always encountering new ways to learn about law in society, new ways to connect law and society.
Why should professionals or students join LSA?
LSA’s warmth and accessibility is unusual and special given academia’s tendency towards closed networks: with LSA, you can join a CRN one year, chair it two years later, contribute to association-wide committees the year after, and become an Associate Editor of its flagship journal and a Trustee of the Association the year after that. I should know—I did. Those opportunities aren’t just valuable because they are prized by hiring or promotions committees: they’re also valuable because they help us learn about the very special—and largely self-operated—world of academia that we have all chosen to live in. I have learned so much from my work with LSA that I simply would not have learned by this stage in my career elsewhere.
Learn more about Deepa Das Acevedo, her many publications, awards, and involvement with academic organizations here.