Dr. Asha Bajpai is the Dean and Professor of Law of the School of Law, Rights and Constitutional Governance at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, India. She is a PhD in Law with specialization on Child Rights. Her PhD thesis was on the ‘Best Interest of the Child in the Indian Legal System’ She has been involved in, teaching, research, training and legislative reform, for more than two decades.
Her teaching and research interests include laws and rights relating to children, women, youth, and other disadvantaged and vulnerable sections of the society. She has been extensively involved in law reform assignments both for governments and international organizations. She was a Fulbright Visiting Lecturer at the Washington College of Law, American University, where she designed and taught a course on Child Rights and Laws- International and Comparative Perspectives to the LLM, JD and dual degree students. She has also lectured at the Warwick University and the Westminster University. She designed and conducted the post graduate diploma course in child rights at TISS. She drafted a global curriculum on legislative reform relating to children. From the coming academic year, she is initiating a course in LLM in Access to Justice for the Vulnerable. She has been designing and conducting training programs for the police, judiciary and other law enforcement agencies on child protection and law.
She was the lead writer of the Victim Witness Protocol for victims and witnesses of child trafficking for exploitation in South Asia. She has authored the book on Child Rights in India- Law, Policy and Practice, published By OUP which is soon going to be launched in its third edition. Her recent publications also include a chapter on Youth Rights, Law and Governance in the State of Urban Youth Report India 2012 of UN Habitat. She edited the Special International issue on Child Rights, Law and Emerging Challenges of the Law, Social Justice and Development Journal of the University of Warwick, U.K. Her other publications include Born Unfree (on child labour).
A keynote speaker at several conferences and seminars including the Macalester International Round Table on "Protecting India’s Children: Vulnerabilities and the Protection of Intellectually Challenged Children. She is directing a filed action project for rehabilitation of intellectually challenged abused , orphan children