Dr. Mitra Sharafi

Biography

Mitra Sharafi is a legal historian whose research focuses on South Asia. She holds law degrees from Cambridge and Oxford (the UK equivalent of JD and LLM) and history degrees from McGill (BA) and Princeton (PhD). Her book, 'Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia: Parsi Legal Culture, 1772-1947', won the Law Society Association’s 2015 Hurst Prize. Currently, she is working on a monograph titled 'Fear and Falsehood: Forensic Science, Law, and Crime in Colonial South Asia', which will be published in Cornell University Press’s Corpus Juris series in spring 2026. One of her major research projects explores non-European law students of the British Empire who came to London’s Inns of Court to become barristers between the 1860s and 1960s. Sharafi has published articles on various topics, including the history of abortion, blood-stain testing, forum-shopping in divorce, the legal profession, constitutionalism, rule of law, and slavery. Her future articles will examine the role of scientific experts in criminal trials and the history of law book publishing. Her research has received funding from multiple prestigious organizations including the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In addition to her research, Sharafi teaches Contracts at the University of Wisconsin Law School and undergraduate courses in Legal Studies and History. She is also the president of the American Society for Legal History for the term 2025-27 and has managed the South Asian Legal History Resources website since 2010.

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