Dr. Nandini Bhattacharyya Panda is an Honorary Distinguished Fellow of Asian Confluence. Till recent times, she was a Senior/Professorial Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. She has served as a Researcher and Director of a documentary film on the Lepcha of the Darjeeling hills as a Project Fellow (2009-2011)and Fellow at MAKAIAS, (2012-15). She has been a Senior Academic Fellow at ICHR, New Delhi (2006-2008). She has published a number of international academic papers in International journals and publications to her credit. She has worked extensively on law and northeast India. She is an acclaimed author of a pathbreaking monograph entitled ‘Appropriation and Invention of Tradition: The English East India Company and Hindu Law in Early Colonial Bengal‘ published by the Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2008. Her forthcoming edited volume entitled ‘Custom, Law and Colonial State in Northeast India: Dynamics and Challenges for the Postcolonial State is being published by Routledge, U.K./New York. She is a D.Phil from the University of Oxford.