Dr Asang Wankhede is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at King's India Institute.

He was awarded his doctorate in Law from the University of Oxford in 2025. Prior to Oxford, Asang obtained his LLM degree in human rights, conflict, and justice from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, with a Distinction in 2018. He read the LLM as a Felix Scholar. He is an alumnus of National Law University, Delhi, and received B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) degree in 2016.

Research

• Constitutional Law and Anti-Discrimination Law
• International Human Rights Law
• Sociology of Law/Law & Society
• Law and Political Science

Dr Wankhede's DPhil project undertook doctrinal assessment of Indian constitutional law jurisprudence on the interaction of caste and poverty in Indian affirmative action policy, where it critiqued the proliferation of Reservations in favour of dominant upper-castes and middle-castes groups. His 2022 monograph, Affirmative Action for Economically Weaker Sections and Upper-Castes in Indian Constitutional Law (Routledge UK) provided first systemic analysis and critique of the reservations for upper-castes and EWS groups in India. It built on his MPhil (Law) at Oxford (awarded without corrections) project that critiques the affirmative action for upper-castes and general category in India.

Dr Wankhede’s report, Caste in Australia: A Phenomenology of Casteism, led to formal recognition of Caste-based discrimination (CBD) as a form of intersectional racial discrimination by the Australian Human Rights Commission as part of its National Anti-Racism Framework. Dr Wankhede led the Caste in Australia study, funded by the AHRC and the Federation of Ethnic Communities' Councils of Australia (FECCA) which gathered extensive evidence on emerging forms of discrimination in multicultural societies within Australia’s South Asian diaspora. Through interviews with 146 participants from caste-oppressed communities, the project documented 600 pages of evidence, presenting compelling grounds for this legislative reform. His subsequent probono advocacy for grassroots Dalit organisations led to AHRC opening up its complaints mechanism for caste-based discrimination related complaints for Caste-oppressed communities in Australia.

Expertise and public engagement

Dr Wankhede is an Op-Ed contributor for the Guardian and has reviewed academic papers for peer-reviewed journals like the Journal of Political Economy (The University of Chicago Press).

He has also undertaken anti-caste advocacy at UN Human Rights forums.