Balakrishnan Rajagopal

Balakrishnan Rajagopal is Associate Professor of Law and Development at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and Founding Director of the Program on Human Rights and Justice at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also Founder of the Displacement Research and Action Network. Rajagopal is recognized as a leading participant in, and founder of, Third World Approaches to International Law. He has practiced law in both India and the United States and has also worked extensively with the UN, the World Commission on Dams, and other international organizations, agencies and NGOs in advancing human rights issues. In 1997, he was awarded Cambodia’s highest civilian award for a non-national - the Royal Order of Sahametrei - by King Norodom Sihanoul in recognition of his work in that country as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. He has published numerous articles in leading law journals and is the author of International Law from Below: Development, Social Movements and Third World Resistance (2003) and co-editor of Reshaping Justice: International Law and the Third World (2008). Rajagopal received an LLB from the University of Madras, India, an LLM from Washington College of Law, and an SJD from Harvard Law School.