Zaid Deva

Zaid is a DPhil candidate at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, working under the supervision of Professor Nicholas Barber. His thesis studies the federal constitutional imaginaries of state and state sovereignty in the Indian constitution-making project. Prior to this, he completed an MPhil in Law under the supervision of Professor Tarunabh Khaitan, focussing on the question of sovereignty in the Kashmir-India constitutional relations between 1947-1953. 

Zaid completed his undergraduate law degree at Gujarat National Law University (GNLU), India, in 2020, where he served as the Editor-in-Chief of the inaugural GNLU Student Law Review and also chaired the Student Research Development Council. He went on to pursue an LLM at the SOAS University of London as a Felix Scholar, during which he also held the position of Managing Editor of the SOAS Law Journal. In 2019, Zaid interned at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, where his work examined the nature and role of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution in the Indian federal structure. A revised version of this work was later published in the Indian Law Review, where it received the Best Article award in 2021.

Zaid’s professional background cuts across legal practice and academic scholarship. Prior to commencing his DPhil, he practiced as an Advocate before the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir, following an earlier engagement as a Fellow at the National Law University, Delhi. He is interested in legal and political theory, and constitutional law.