PhD, Geneva Graduate Institute

Malavika Rao is a Postdoctoral Researcher at CEENRG, Department of Land Economy, and a Fellow of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law 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 PhD thesis, awarded the 2025 Ladislas Mysyrowicz Prize, explores the application of the principle of non-refoulement in international law to people fleeing food deprivation. She is now working on her book manuscript. Malavika is also affiliated with the Refugee Law Initiative (RLI) at the School of Advanced Study, University of London.