Deepa Das Acevedo

Deepa Das Acevedo is a legal anthropologist. She is the Editor in Chief of PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review as well as a Contributing Editor to the Work Law section of JOTWELL, a Fulbright-Nehru Scholar, and a past Trustee of the Law & Society Association (Class of 2024).

Since 2020, Deepa has been studying faculty tenure as an employment protection in order to redirect conversations about academic labor dynamics. Her crossover monograph, The War on Tenure (Cambridge University Press, 2025) was named one of Forbes’ Top 10 Books in Higher Education for 2025. The War on Tenure has been featured on several higher-ed podcasts including College Matters, Ed Up Insights, Tea for Teaching, and the New Books Network, while her bylines have appeared in TIME, Barron's, InsideHigherEd, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Lately, her work has focused on the intersection of academic labor and expressive freedom.

Deepa also studies constitutional law, religion-state relations, secular governance, and the judiciary in India. Her book, The Battle for Sabarimala: Religion, Law, and Gender in Contemporary India, was published by Oxford University Press in 2024, and her co-authored book, The Judicial System of India, is under agreement with Oxford. Her research on the Sabarimala women's entry dispute and related issues has been published in in, among others, Economic & Political Weekly, Law & Social Inquiry, the American Journal of Comparative Law, the International Journal of Constitutional Law, the Asian Journal of Law & Society, and Modern Asian Studies.