In this Research in Progress Seminar, Nisha Poyyaprath Rayaroth discusses her book investigating the ramifications of India's ban on child performers under the age of 14.
- Researcher
- Date
- Thursday 9 Nov 2023, 13:00 - 14:00
- Type
- Seminar
- Spoken Language
- English
- Room
- Room 4.39
- Location
- International Institute of Social Studies
- Ticket information
No registration is required to attend this event in-person.
In her book, Jumbos and Jumping Devils: A Social History of Indian Circus, she talks about a major legal intervention by the Indian State into the lives of the circus community.
On 18 April 2011, in keeping with international standards (ILO) seeking to regulate children’s work, a legal ban was issued on the performance of children below fourteen in the circus industry by the Supreme Court of India.
In her talk Rayaroth asks:
- What are the ramifications of such a legal intervention?
- What happened to these children ‘liberated’ from the circus companies?
She addressess the binary of cruelty/emancipation in the legal discourses and the limitations of this framework.
About the speaker
Dr Nisha Poyyaprath Rayaroth is a historian from South India and has recently joined International Institute for Asian Studies at Leiden University as a research fellow. Her book, Jumbos and Jumping Devils: A Social History of Indian Circus was published with Oxford University Press in 2020.
She has formerly been a Fulbright fellow at Yale University, Mellon-SSRC fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand and a SASNET fellow in Lund University.
- More information
The Research in Progress seminars provide an informal venue for presentations of ongoing research by ISS researchers and scholars from the wider development studies community.
