Kiran is a Professor in Human Rights in the Department of Sociology. A qualified lawyer, Kiran has worked as a scholar, practitioner and activist in the areas of refugee law, sexual and gender-based violence, torture prevention, policing and international criminal law in Australia, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
Kiran’s research is particularly concerned with the interactions between legal frameworks and social justice struggles of marginalized and/or subaltern groups. She is also generally interested in postcolonial, subaltern and feminist approaches to human rights, law, sexual and gender-based violence and transitional justice. She is the author of two books: The Socio-Political Practice of Human Rights (Routledge 2016) and Racialised Gang Rape and the Reinforcement of Dominant Order: Discourses of Gender, Race and Nation (Routledge 2017).
Kiran is currently working on a project entitled, ‘The Everyday Life of Human Rights’ focused on subaltern engagements with the language and institutions of human rights in post-war Sri Lanka.
Teaching Kiran is the Convenor of the MA in Human Rights, Culture and Social Justice .
Areas of Supervision Kiran is interested in supervising projects on human rights, humanitarianism, transitional justice, feminist, postcolonial, decolonial and subaltern theory and politics. She is also interested in projects that adopt a socio-legal approach: looking at the relationship between legal and social norms.
Publications and research outputs
Book Grewal, Kiran K . 2020. Essays
Grewal, Kiran K ; Ariyarathne, Kaushalya and Cegu Isadeen, Hasanah. 2019. Three Essays on Politics
Grewal, Kiran . 2016. Racialised Gang Rape and the Reinforcement of Dominant Order: Discourses of Gender, Race and Nation
Edited Journal Hemmings, Clare; Sabsay, Leticia; Grewal, Kiran K and Tudor, Alyosxa, eds. 2020. Confronting 'The Household' - Feminist Review Blog Special Series
Book Section Grewal, Kiran and Cegu Isadeen, Hasanah. 2021. Between the Nationalists and the Fundamentalists, Still we have Hope!
Grewal, Kiran K . 2021. Feminist Responses to Conflict: Within, against and beyond the law
Grewal, Kiran and Munasinghe, Vidura. 2016. Human rights and everyday practices of policing in post-war Sri Lanka
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Grewal, Kiran . 2016. Can the Subaltern Speak within International Law? Women’s Rights Activism, International Legal Institutions and the Power of ‘Strategic Misunderstanding’
Dagistanli, Selda and Grewal, Kiran . 2012. Perverse Muslim Masculinities in Contemporary Orientalist Discourse: The Vagaries of Muslim Immigration in the West
Grewal, Kiran . 2012. International Criminal Justice: Advancing the Cause of Women’s Rights? The Example of the Special Court for Sierra Leone
Grewal, Kiran . 2011. ‘The Natives Strike Back’ – L’Appel des Indigènes de la République and the Death of Republican values in Postcolonial France
Article Grewal, Kiran . 2023. The Epistemic Violence of Transitional Justice: A View from Sri Lanka
Grewal, Kiran . 2021. Privilege, Precarity and the Epistemic and Political Challenge of Covid-19
Grewal, Kiran K . 2020. Resisting the Violence of Common Sense
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Grewal, Kiran . 2019. The Role of Victims in Transitional Justice: Agency, Cooption and Exclusion (Review Essay)
Grewal, Kiran K . 2018. Working with the complexity and diversity of reality: Rethinking the approach to human rights praxis
Grewal, Kiran K . 2018. Politics beyond institutions: The creation of new social imaginaries in post-war Sri Lanka
Grewal, Kiran K . 2017. Book Review: Tuba Inal, Looting and Rape in War Time: Law and Change in International Relations
Grewal, Kiran K . 2017. Book Review: Ben Golder, Foucault and the politics of rights
Grewal, Kiran . 2015. International Criminal Law as a Site for Enhancing Women’s Rights? Challenges, Possibilities, Strategies
Grewal, Kiran . 2014. Rape in Conflict, Rape in Peace: Questioning the Revolutionary Potential of International Criminal Justice for Women’s Human Rights
Celermajer, D. and Grewal, Kiran . 2013. Preventing Human Rights Violations 'From the Inside': Enhancing the Role of Human Rights Education in Security Sector Reform
Grewal, Kiran . 2012. Reclaiming the Voice of the ‘Third World Woman’
Grewal, Kiran . 2012. Australia, the Feminist Nation? Discourses of Gender, ‘Culture’ and Nation in the ‘K Brothers’ Gang Rapes
Grewal, Kiran . 2012. The Protection of Sexual Autonomy under International Criminal Law: The International Criminal Court and the Challenge of Defining Rape
Grewal, Kiran . 2009. "VA T'FAIRE INTÉGRER!": THEAPPEL DES FÉMINISTES INDIGÈNES AND THE CHALLENGE TO "REPUBLICAN VALUES" IN POSTCOLONIAL FRANCE
Report Grewal, Kiran and Celermajer, D.. 2015. Issues Paper 4: Human Rights in the Nepali Law Enforcement and Security Sector
Grewal, Kiran and Celermajer, D.. 2015. Issues Paper 3: Human Rights in the Sri Lankan Law Enforcement and Security Sector
Munasinghe, Vidura; Ariyarathne, Kaushalya; Chandrasekera, Thilini; Celermajer, D. and Grewal, Kiran . 2015. Issues Paper 9: Human Rights in the Sri Lankan Law Enforcement Sector – Puttalam District
Other Grewal, Kiran K . 2018. Do we need human rights law?
Grewal, Kiran . 2017. To change torture practices, we must change the entire system
Grewal, Kiran . 2016. Creativity and resilience: how do war survivors make transitional justice work for them?
Research Interests
Human rights
Humanitarianism
Postcolonial, subaltern and decolonial theory and politics
Feminist theory and politics
Transitional justice
Sri Lanka/South Asia
Socio-legal theory and methodologie
