Gonville & Caius College Fellow Dr Shruti Iyer has won the Law and Society Association Dissertation Prize for 2026 for her DPhil thesis.

Dr Iyer, who became a Fellow of Caius in October 2025 through the Research Fellowship Competition, was honoured for her thesis, conducted at the University of Oxford and entitled Silicosis and the State: Valuing Life and Labour in Contemporary India. She examined how silicosis, an incurable lung disease caused by prolonged exposure to silica dust, has become a site of political struggle involving workers, activists, and the state in Rajasthan, India.

The Law and Society Association annually honours leading international scholars “for their groundbreaking publications and contributions to the study of law and society”, it says, with 15 winners across the categories in 2026. The dissertation prize was first awarded in 1999.

The award citation read: “The (award) committee uniformly noted that this dissertation presented a vivid, engaging, and beautiful ethnography of a case and setting that were both unique and carefully connected to broader contexts and theories across a surprising breadth of disciplines and subject areas.”

Dr Iyer is scheduled to receive the prize in San Francisco, California, at the LSA Annual Meeting, which takes place from May 28 to 31.