Nandini Bhattacharyya-Panda is a fellow of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies (MAKAIAS). She completed her doctorate from University of Oxford. Her book entitled Appropriation and Invention of Tradition: The East India Company and Hindu Law in Early Colonial Bengal (OUP, Delhi) had several reprints. She is the author of several articles, including in The Blackwell Companion to Religion and Violence (Wiley Blackwell, New York, Oxford). She is engaged in research on culture, ethnicity, law and gender in the Indian perspective.