Shalini Iyengar

Shalini Iyengar is a SPILS Fellow at Stanford Law School and is advised by Professor Allen S. Weiner. Her research at Stanford focuses on strategic rights-based climate change litigation and its impacts on environmental policy at national and international levels. She is particularly interested in studying how litigants are using courts as sites of legal mobilization and the creative ways in which science-based narratives are being used in climate litigation. Shalini is also conducting research on IUU fishing and human rights violations in the global seafood trade under the supervision of Professor Janet Martinez and Professor Jim Leape.

Shalini received her law degree from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, in 2011 and completed her masters degree in Comparative Law and Economics from the International University College of Turin in 2012. She then practiced law at Norton Rose Fulbright LLP in London and Shanghai where, in addition to her work in environmental project finance and litigation, she worked on a pro bono case on indigenous land rights. Shalini subsequently joined the Faculty of the School of Law, Environment, and Planning, at Srishti Institute of Art, Design, and Technology where she taught courses on environmental law, policy, governance, and design between 2016 and 2019. During this time, Shalini was also a Legal Consultant to World Wildlife Fund India, Visiting Lecturer at the Foreign Service Institute, New Delhi, ESSCA School of Management, Shanghai, and the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. In 2018, Shalini was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship to pursue a masters degree in International Human Rights Law at the University of Oxford. Shalini has published widely and has received several awards for her writing and research. She is also a member of the IUCN Commission on Education and Communication and of the World Commission on Environmental Law.