Malavika Rao

NextGen Scholar

Postdoctoral Researcher at C-EENRG, Department of Land Economy, at the University of Cambridge.

Malavika Rao is a Postdoctoral Researcher at C-EENRG, Department of Land Economy, at the University of Cambridge. She is a recipient of the Post-doc Mobility Fellowship (2024-2026) awarded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). Malavika holds a PhD in International Law from the Geneva Graduate Institute (2024), an LLM in Environmental Law, and Energy and Clean Technology Law from the University of California, Berkeley (2017), and a bachelor’s degree in law from Christ University, India (2016). Prior to joining the PhD program, she worked as a Utility Justice Legal Fellow at The Utility Reform Network (TURN) in San Francisco (2017-2018).

Malavika’s areas of research are environmental law, migration law, the right to food, and climate change. Her doctoral work explored the application of the principle of non-refoulement in international law to people fleeing food deprivation. As a post-doc at C-EENRG, Malavika will explore the international legal infrastructure underpinning food flows and food distribution. Malavika is also affiliated with the Refugee Law Initiative (RLI) at the School of Advanced Study, University of London.