Bio

Deepa Das Acevedo is a legal anthropologist. She is a Trustee of the Law & Society Association (Class of 2024), an Associate Editor for the Law & Society Review, a Contributing Editor to the Work Law section of JOTWELL, and a member of the advisory board for Law & Social Inquiry. Deepa’s research blends ethnographic fieldwork and anthropological theory with doctrinal and policy analysis to provide new insights about legal rules and institutions. In addition to her work on the law and politics of India, she studies employment regulation in the gig economy, and is exploring methodological and theoretical developments in the anthropology of law. Her research has been selected for the Stanford/Harvard/Yale Junior Faculty Forum and has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, the American Philosophical Society, the Committee on Southern Asian Studies at The University of Chicago, and the Research Grants Committee at the University of Alabama. She is currently working on a monograph, The Battle for Sabarimala, about the dispute over gender equality and religious freedom involving the Sabarimala temple in Kerala, India. Her edited volume, Beyond the Algorithm: Qualitative Insights for Gig Work Regulation, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2021. Her articles have appeared in, among others, Law & Social Inquiry, Southern California Law Review, Arizona State Law Journal, the American Journal of Comparative Law, the International Journal of Constitutional Law, The University of Chicago Law Review Online, Cornell Law Review Online, Notre Dame Law Review Online, Boston College International and Comparative Law Review, Penn Law’s Regulation Review, Employee Rights & Employment Policy Journal, Saint Louis University Law Journal, the Asian Journal of Law & Society, Modern Asian Studies, as well as in edited volumes by Oxford and Brill. Her virtual special issue of the Law and Society Review titled “Innovation in Legal Anthropology: an LSR Retrospective” (co-edited with Anna C. Offit) appeared in July 2021. Deepa is active in the Law & Society Association; besides her service on the LSA Board, she is also a co-chair of LSA’s CRN 8 (Labor Rights) and has served on the International Activities Committee and the Committee on Collaborative Research Networks. She has chaired the AALS sections on Anthropology and Law and Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation, and has served as Secretary of the Section on Scholarship. Currently, Deepa is a Board Member of the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology (APLA) as well as a Labor Seat on the Members Programmatic, Advisory, and Advocacy Committee (MPAAC) of the American Anthropological Association. Before joining the law school faculty in 2018, Deepa was a Sharswood Fellow at Penn Law, where she taught Employment Law and a seminar on gig economy work. She received her A.B. in Politics from Princeton, and both her JD and PhD in Anthropology from The University of Chicago. At Alabama, Deepa teaches Employment Law, Employee Benefits (ERISA), Legislation & Regulation, Legal Anthropology, and Gig Work.