India Thusi, Ph.D.

Senior Scientist

Professor, Maurer School of Law

Dr. Thusi’s research examines racial and sexual hierarchies as they relate to policing, race, gender, and sexual behavior. Her articles and essays have been published or are forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review, NYU Law Review, Northwestern Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Cornell Law Review Online, and Utah Law Review. Her first book, Policing Bodies: Law, Sex Work, and Desire in Johannesburg is forthcoming with Stanford University Press.

Thusi earned a J.D. from Fordham University School of Law in New York, and Ph.D. in Social Anthropology and Law & Society from University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Thusi’s research is inextricably connected to her previous legal experience at organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and—most recently—The Opportunity Agenda, a social justice communication lab that collaborates to effect lasting policy and culture change. She has clerked for two federal judges, and for a justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, the country’s highest court.

Thusi’s many acknowledgements have marked her as a rising star investigating the intersection of race, gender, and law. Thusi received a W.E.B. Dubois Fellowship at Harvard University, the Andrew W. Mellon Doctoral Fellowship in the Humanities, was named a Next Generation African Scholar by the Social Science Research Council, and most recently was selected as a Fulbright U.S. Global Scholar for 2020-2022.