Danish Sheik

Danish Sheikh is a lecturer at La Trobe Law School. His work explores the capacity of law to conduct repair, through learning from acts of queer dissent. His research is located at the intersections of law, literature and performance, drawing upon his work as an activist lawyer and theatre practitioner in India.

Danish has law degrees from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. He received his PhD from the Melbourne Law School, where he was awarded the law school’s Student Published Research Prize. His scholarship has been cited by the Indian Supreme Court in its decision to decriminalise homosexuality in 2018 and was awarded the Postgraduate Paper Prize by the Law, Literature and Humanities Association of Australasia in 2022.

His first book Love and Reparation: A Theatrical Response to the Section 377 Litigation in India was published by Seagull Books and distributed by the University of Chicago Press. It drew upon court transcripts, affidavits (real and imagined), archival research, and personal memoir to restage the Section 377 litigation in India.