Born into a family of scholars and shaped by rigorous academic training, this in-depth interview traces the journey of Dr Neeti Shikha, Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader at the University of the West of England. Spanning Indian institutions, international universities, and public policy bodies, her career reflects a sustained commitment to legal academia, research, and institution building. From early influences rooted in intellectual integrity to advanced research at UCL and a PhD focused on corporate governance and legal transplantation, the conversation explores how academic leadership, mentoring and digital legal education intersect in a global academic career.
This interview has been published by Anshi Mudgal and The SuperLawyer Team
What early experiences or influences inspired your interest in law and academic research?
I was born into a family of academics, with both my parents holding PhDs, and this profoundly shaped my early relationship with learning. Education was never treated as instrumental or transactional in our household but as a way of life grounded in discipline, intellectual honesty, and sustained effort. My parents came from modest beginnings and built their academic careers purely through hard work, which instilled in me a deep respect for rigour, perseverance, and the pursuit of excellence. From an early age, I internalised the idea that knowledge demands commitment and that intellectual integrity matters as much as success.
I was always driven by an inner quest for knowledge and a deep curiosity about justice, politics, and social change. These instincts became more sharply defined during my university years. Participation in mooting and engagement with student movements and legal debates exposed me to the living nature of law and its role in shaping social and political outcomes. Engaging with questions around rights, governance, and institutional power made me increasingly inquisitive about how law operates both doctrinally and in practice. That phase transformed law from a subject into an intellectual vocation.
Mooting in particular played a formative role in developing my research orientation. Preparing arguments required deep engagement with legal principles, comparative reasoning, and policy considerations, and it trained me to question assumptions, test rationality, and think critically under pressure. This experience resonated strongly with a principle I continue to value deeply, often captured in Gandhi’s words about living as if one might die tomorrow but learning as if one were to live forever. The idea that learning is continuous and ethical, rather than finite or instrumental, has stayed with me throughout my academic journey.
Over time, I came to appreciate that academic research and the serious study of law require sustained commitment to questioning, reflection, and critical thinking. While many of these qualities were shaped early through my upbringing, they were honed through practice, failure, dialogue, and intellectual discipline. Equally important was the role of peer learning. I consistently found that my strongest academic growth occurred when I was surrounded by intellectually curious, hardworking, and ambitious peers. Engaging in deep discussions, collective problem solving, and shared inquiry reinforced my belief that scholarship is not a solitary pursuit but one that is strengthened by the company of thoughtful and committed people.
Together, these early influences shaped not only my interest in law but also my commitment to academic research as a disciplined, ethical, and collaborative pursuit of knowledge.
How did your Master’s at UCL and PhD at NLU Jodhpur shape your perspective and impact your journey?
My Master’s studies at UCL were genuinely life changing and intellectually transformative, shaped by an academically rigorous and research led learning environment that combined substantive legal depth with a clearly articulated pedagogic philosophy. The programme was delivered by leading scholars and practitioner academics, including Dan Prentice, Graham Penn, Arad Reisberg, and Iain Fletcher. Their teaching consistently engaged students with first principles, policy rationales, and the broader institutional and economic implications of legal regulation. The presence of practitioner academics ensured that doctrinal analysis was continuously tested against real world commercial and regulatory realities, creating a learning experience that was intellectually demanding, practically relevant, and deeply formative.
The design of the programme placed deliberate emphasis on independent learning, critical engagement, and intellectual autonomy. At Master’s level, students were expected to take responsibility for structuring their own learning, developing original arguments, and engaging critically with complex bodies of scholarship. The curriculum and assessment regime required analytical depth, synthesis, and evaluative reasoning rather than descriptive reproduction. This approach significantly shaped my intellectual maturity and strengthened my capacity for advanced legal reasoning. Access to UCL’s world class library and research resources enabled sustained and intensive engagement with primary and secondary materials, particularly in the period following the global financial crisis, when debates around banking failure, regulatory reform, and systemic risk were actively shaping both academic discourse and legal practice.
The international and professionally diverse student cohort further enriched this experience. Many peers brought prior experience from legal practice, financial institutions, regulatory bodies, and public policy roles across multiple jurisdictions. Engaging with such diversity sharpened my comparative perspective and deepened my understanding of how legal systems operate across different institutional and cultural contexts. Informal study groups and sustained peer discussion became an important site of intellectual exchange, allowing complex legal problems to be examined from multiple angles and reinforcing the value of collective reasoning.
My doctoral research at NLU Jodhpur further consolidated my scholarly identity and commitment to academic inquiry. Under the mentorship and encouragement of Justice Mathur, I undertook doctoral research in company law and corporate governance that studied and assessed the influence of legal transplantation on Indian corporate law. Focusing on the Companies Act 2013 at a time when it was evolving from proposed legislation into enacted law, my research critically reassessed the limits and consequences of legal transplantation, particularly the influence of UK company law on Indian corporate regulation. The evolving legislative framework required sustained methodological rigour, conceptual adaptability, and close engagement with comparative legal theory.
The PhD experience confirmed that academic life is intellectually demanding and often solitary. It requires discipline, self motivation, and resilience, particularly when pursued alongside teaching commitments. Conducting doctoral research in parallel with full time academic responsibilities demanded careful organisation and sustained focus. Above all, this period reinforced the importance of intellectual honesty, critical self reflection, and long term engagement with ideas. These experiences continue to shape my approach to research, teaching, and policy engagement, and underpin my commitment to rigorous and socially engaged legal scholarship.
What inspired you to pursue an academic career, and how has your role evolved from Indian institutions to international academia?
Teaching has always been the core of my academic identity and the source of my deepest professional fulfilment. It is one of the few activities I can engage in continuously, even for extended hours, without experiencing fatigue. In my early career, my only hesitation about pursuing academia was whether it would be financially sustainable within the Indian context. With strong family support and a consciously simple lifestyle, that concern gradually receded, allowing me to commit fully to academic life. What continues to draw me to teaching is its immediacy and meaning. The classroom feels like a space of intellectual energy where learning emerges through dialogue, experimentation, and shared curiosity.
A significant influence on my academic vocation was witnessing my father’s lifelong commitment to his students. Many of them went on to become leading scholars and professionals across the world, and observing the long term impact of his mentorship shaped my own understanding of education as a relational and enduring endeavour. Teaching, for me, has never been limited to content delivery but has always been about shaping intellectual confidence, ethical engagement, and independent thinking.
My academic role in India was broad and institutionally embedded. It involved teaching large cohorts, designing and revising curricula, contributing to institution building, delivering executive education, and engaging in policy oriented and doctrinal research. This phase required adaptability, leadership, and a strong sense of academic responsibility, particularly within resource constrained and rapidly evolving educational environments.
My transition to international academia marked an evolution rather than a rupture. Teaching internationally has involved working with smaller and more diverse student cohorts, engaging with digitally mediated learning environments, navigating structured quality assurance frameworks, and deepening my immersion in research culture. These contexts have demanded greater emphasis on reflective practice, student centred learning, and alignment between teaching, research, and institutional standards.
Despite these contextual shifts, the essence of my academic work has remained constant. Teaching, mentoring, peer learning, and continuous self evolution continue to define my professional life. Across Indian and international institutions, academia has represented for me not merely a career path but a lifelong commitment to learning, intellectual growth, and contribution to the scholarly community.
What motivated your transitions across institutions, disciplines, and countries, and how did you navigate the move to the UK?
My transitions across institutions, disciplines, and countries have consistently been guided by a desire to undertake work that is institutionally meaningful and socially consequential. Rather than pursuing mobility for its own sake, I have been drawn to roles where academic labour extends beyond individual teaching or publication and contributes to building programmes, shaping policy, and strengthening institutional capacity. At several points in my career, this has meant stepping into formative or founding roles, often within institutions undergoing transition or growth.
In India, this orientation took shape early in my academic career. At NLU Jodhpur, I was closely involved in institution building during a formative phase of the university’s development. In 2011–12, I set up the Centre for Comparative Commercial Law, creating a platform for research, curriculum development, and international collaboration. Through this work, we established academic partnerships with UK based centres at a time when internationalisation in Indian legal education was still evolving. This experience shaped my understanding of academic leadership as something grounded in vision, continuity, and sustained relationships rather than short term outputs.
Alongside institution building, I remained an active researcher and was deeply engaged in policy oriented work with government institutions. Much of this work found its way into policymaking and regulatory thinking, which I found particularly fulfilling, as it demonstrated the capacity of rigorous academic research to inform real world governance. During this phase, I also worked extensively in executive education and leadership training, which further deepened my understanding of how law operates in practice. One particularly formative experience was training senior leadership following the Indian government’s decision to corporatise the Airports Authority of India. I was among the first to train over thirty airport directors for their transition into corporate governance roles. That experience brought home the reality that corporate governance is not merely about formal rules, but about how responsibility, accountability, and decision making are internalised within institutions.
This combination of research, practice, and institutional engagement culminated in my work at the Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. I served as the founding head of the Centre for Insolvency and Bankruptcy and was entrusted with launching and delivering India’s first Graduate Insolvency Programme. When I joined, the programme existed only as a brief conceptual outline. Launching and delivering it required building the academic framework, admissions processes, institutional partnerships, and national outreach from the ground up. Working with a very small team, but supported by leading figures from government, industry, and the professions, we developed a programme that has since sustained itself across multiple cohorts. That experience was one of the most demanding of my career and fundamentally reshaped my understanding of academic leadership, resilience, and institutional responsibility.
My move to the UK was both a professional and deeply personal decision. As a mother to a young daughter who was six at the time, I was seeking an environment that would allow me to sustain academic excellence alongside care responsibilities. The UK higher education system has been transformative in this respect. It is built on institutional trust and professional autonomy, where contribution is assessed through integrity, quality, and outcomes rather than visible presence or long working hours.
Earlier in my career, there were moments when professional demands left little room for care responsibilities, including times when I had to leave a very young child unwell in order to meet inflexible expectations. These experiences were not individual failings, but reflections of systems that are still evolving. By contrast, the UK system places trust in academics, and in turn, academics work consciously to honour that trust. The ability to structure work with autonomy, to have genuinely protected time, and to pursue research without constant administrative overload has fundamentally changed how I experience academic life.
Being able to contribute fully and responsibly to my institution, while also remaining deeply engaged in my daughter’s life, is something I value greatly and regard as a marker of a sustainable and ethical academic career. Across all my transitions, what has remained constant is my belief that academic work must be intellectually rigorous, institutionally responsible, and human in its design. Whether in India or the UK, in law schools, business schools, or policy institutions, my motivation has been to help build academic environments that trust people, value ideas, and allow scholars to thrive as whole individuals.
As Programme Leader for the Online LLM at UWE, what does this stage of your journey represent in terms of growth, responsibility, and influence?
Leading the Online LLM at UWE represents a deeply meaningful stage of growth for me, particularly at a time when online education is shaping the future of higher education globally. Having earlier co-designed India’s first bilingual public policy programme, Lok Niti, I was acutely aware of both the promise and complexity of digital learning. This role challenged me to design an inclusive programme that welcomes learners from non-law backgrounds while maintaining academic rigour.
The responsibility lies in ensuring that what we design today remains relevant for legal professionals even a decade from now. The influence is significant, as I now work with a truly global cohort of students. Personally, progressing from lecturer to senior lecturer and programme leader in the UK has been humbling and reaffirmed my belief that growth should be measured through learning and contribution, not titles. I am particularly excited about developing innovative digital pedagogy and responsibly integrating AI into legal education.
What challenges have you faced in managing the multiple roles and responsibilities throughout your career, and how did you overcome them?
Like most academics, I have always balanced multiple roles including teaching, leadership, advisory responsibilities, and policy engagement but the most significant challenge has been managing all of this alongside motherhood. Serving on advisory boards and contributing to institutions beyond my home universities has been both a responsibility and a privilege, allowing me to give back to spaces that shaped me.
At the same time, being a single working mother, especially after moving to the UK, required deep personal adjustment. What helped me was discipline, organisation, and clarity of priorities. The UK system has allowed me to live fully as both a mother and a professional, without guilt dominating either role. Today, I value balance over perfection and have learned that meaningful work and meaningful family life can coexist when guided by structure, gratitude, and purpose.
How do you approach mentoring and supporting students beyond the classroom, and why is it meaningful to you?
For me, mentoring beyond the classroom is essential, particularly in today’s high-pressure environment shaped by competition and social media. I have seen students arrive at top institutions burdened by expectations, identity crises, and fear of failure. I approach them with empathy rather than judgment, because I remember how vulnerable that phase of life can be.
Many of my students have gone on to succeed in diverse fields and helping them discover their direction has been deeply fulfilling. Mentorship is about unlocking potential and helping students see possibilities beyond conventional paths. I believe the biggest injustice is untapped talent, and if I can help students gain confidence, clarity, and purpose, that is the most meaningful reward I could ask for.
What legacy do you hope to leave through your contributions to law, education, and policy, and what roadmap would you suggest for students aspiring to public policy careers?
I do not think of legacy in a grand or monumental sense. What matters more to me is whether my work has made a meaningful and sustained contribution to how law is taught, researched, and connected to society. My teaching, research, and policy engagement have always been oriented towards helping students and practitioners think more deeply, critically, and ethically about law’s role in shaping the future.
My research agenda is deliberately future focused and interdisciplinary. Working across disciplines has consistently required me to learn new intellectual languages and rethink legal problems from broader institutional, economic, and social perspectives. I have written books on commercial law and public policy, and I am currently working on my seventh book, which focuses specifically on insolvency laws and is scheduled for publication in 2026. Across these works, my endeavour has not been to produce static doctrinal texts, but to promote reflective and forward looking engagement with law. I hope that these books have, even in small ways, influenced how students and scholars think about governance, accountability, and systemic risk.
In my teaching, I have sought to make learning engaging, practice oriented, and intellectually demanding. I encourage students to question assumptions, challenge the status quo, and develop the confidence to think independently. If students leave my classroom with curiosity, ethical clarity, and strong critical thinking skills, I consider that my most meaningful contribution.
One principle that underpins both my teaching and mentoring is the importance of cultivating a healthy mind. Just as a healthy diet is essential for a healthy body, I believe that thoughtful and sustained reading is essential for a healthy mind. I often tell students that reading good books matters deeply, not only for acquiring knowledge but for shaping intellectual character. Learning from the best books and ideas becomes part of one’s academic identity and professional integrity.
At the same time, I emphasise that learning cannot be confined to textbooks alone. The future belongs to those who can think, adapt, and respond to complexity. The capacity to learn, unlearn, and relearn is increasingly vital, particularly in public policy contexts where uncertainty, competing values, and long time horizons are the norm.
For students aspiring to careers in public policy, I recommend building strong foundations in law or economics, alongside comfort with data, numbers, and empirical reasoning. Formal qualifications matter, but skills such as problem framing, evidence based analysis, patience, and ethical judgment matter even more. Public policy is not about speed or visibility, but about discipline, humility, and sustained commitment to the public good.
I am also mindful that each generation engages with work and purpose differently. Today’s students often seek balance, wellbeing, and meaning alongside professional achievement, and this should be understood as a strength rather than a limitation. Hard work remains essential, but so does mental health, reflection, and a sense of purpose. In an increasingly digital and fragmented world, remaining connected to people, communities, and shared social goals will be one of the defining challenges of the future.
This is why I place strong emphasis on peer learning, dialogue, and service oriented thinking. Engaging with others, contributing to society, and grounding professional ambition in broader social responsibility are central to sustaining both intellectual depth and personal resilience. If my work can help students develop not only analytical rigour but also reflective judgment, balance, and a commitment to serving society, that is the legacy I would hope to leave.
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