Ashwini Vasanthakumar

Ashwini Vasanthakumar is an Associate Professor and Queen’s National Scholar in Legal and Political Philosophy at Queen’s Law School. She holds an A.B from Harvard; an M.A from the University of Toronto; a J.D from Yale Law School; and a DPhil from Oxford, where she studied as a Canadian Rhodes Scholar.

Prior to Queen’s, she held positions at King’s College London, University of York, University of Oxford, and Jindal Global Law School. She has been a visiting fellow at the Hertie School (Berlin), the Institute for Futures Studies (Stockholm), and the University of Sydney.

Vasanthakumar’s research explores political authority, membership, and obligation. Her first monograph, The Ethics of Exile: a political theory of diaspora, was published by Oxford University Press in 2021. Her second book examines the ethics of being a migrant and is under contract with Polity Press. Current research projects include: victims’ duties to resist their oppression, transitional justice as transnational justice, and legal mobilization of refugee law with RefLex.

Her research has been supported by SSHRC Insight Development and Insight grants, a British Academy Rising Star Award, the European Research Council, the Swedish Research Council, and the Wallenberg Foundation.

Research foci

Analytic political and legal theory, especially:

• Political obligation and authority
• Migration and transnationalism
• Ethics of resistance

Recent publications

For a full list of publications, please see https://www.ashwinivasanthakumar.com/writing

BOOKS 

• The Ethics of Exile: a political theory of diaspora (Oxford University Press, 2021).
• Beyond Integration: on how to be a good immigrant (under contract, Polity Press)

ARTICLES & REVIEW ESSAYS 

• "Constructing Victimhood: Beyond Innocence and Guilt in Transitional Justice." Book Review. Punishment & Society, 0(0) (online October 2025).
• "On why the poor have duties too," Ethics & Global Politics, 16(2): 8-16 (online July 21, 2023).
• "Cosmopolitan State Citizenship: realistic utopias and their limits," Symposium on C. Hobden's Citizenship in a Globalised World, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (online May 13, 2022).
• "Victims' Reasons and Responses in the Face of Oppression," Harvard Review of Philosophy (online October 12, 2021).
• "The Urgent and the Important: Political Resistance During a Pandemic," 46 Queen's L.J. (2020-2021): 305-316.
• "A Duty to Resist: when disobedience should be uncivil by Candice Delmas" (2021) Mind 130 (517): 290-298.
• "Recent Debates on Victims' Duties to Resist Their Oppression," (2020) Philosophy Compass 15(2).
• "False Choices: a Response to Michael Ignatieff's The Ordinary Virtues," (2019) 30 King's L.J 3: 356-362.
• "Privatising Border Control," (2018) Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 38(3): 411-429.
• "Epistemic Privilege and Victims' Duties to Resist Their Oppression," (2018) Journal of Applied Philosophy 35(3): 465-480.
• "Exile Political Representation," (2016) Journal of Political Philosophy 24(3): 277-296.
• "Treason, Expatriation, and 'So-called' Americans: Recovering the Role of Allegiance in Citizenship," (2014) 12 Geo. J. L & Pub. Pol'y 187.

CHAPTERS 

• "The Political Obligations of Oppressed Citizens: resistance, refusal, and the politics of transformation," in Law as A Means / The Morality in Law (ed. T. Adams, K. Greasley, and D. Reaume)(Oxford University Press, forthcoming)
• "Beginning from Injustice," in Law & Injustice (ed. K. Walton et al.)(Routledge, 2024)
• "Pluralism in Political Obligation," Conversations in Philosophy, Law and Politics (ed. R. Chang and A. Srinivasan) (Oxford University Press, 2024)
• "Legitimacy at the Border," Privatizing Border Control (ed. M. Bosworth and L. Zedner) (Oxford University Press, 2022)
• "Outsourcing Border Control: Public agency and action in migration,’ The Cambridge Handbook of Privatization (ed. A. Dorfman and A. Harel) (Cambridge University Press, 2021)
• "Do Victims Have Obligations Too?" in Women of Ideas (ed. S. Finn) (Oxford University Press, 2021)

PUBLIC AND POLICY WRITING 

• "What it means to live in a city of equals," LSE Review of Books (October 2, 2025)
• "Diaspora Politics, Solidarity, and Transitional Justice in Sri Lanka," PKI Global Justice Journal (2025)
• "Mandatory Naturalisation Oaths: a small price to pay that shouldn't be asked," response to P. Lenard, 'Swearing loyalty: should new citizens pledge allegiance in a naturalisation oath?' EUI Global Citizenship Observatory (October 9, 2023).
• "For Home and Host Countries, Diasporas are a Force to be Reckoned With," World Politics Review (March 7, 2023)
• "Reimagining Refugee Protection," The New Rambler Review (August 4, 2022)
• "Refugee Containment and the Costs of Creating False Dilemmas. A Response to Aleinikoff and Owen," (w. Cathryn Costello) Commentary for ‘The Ethics of Migration Policy Dilemmas’ project, Migration Policy Centre (MPC), European University (June 22, 2022)
• "How refugees strengthen democracy and solidarity," The New Statesman (March 18, 2022)
• "Exiles on Main Street," Aeon Magazine (February 1, 2021)
• "Playing the victim is politically vital and morally serious," Aeon Magazine (March 1, 2019)

MEDIA

• "Injustice, in theory," Just Cause: Exploring Social Justice and the Law, a podcast from the University of Sydney Law School (October 19, 2023)
• S.J.V. Chelvanyakam Memorial Lecture, University of Toronto (April 13, 2023)
• "Is the asylum system broken?" The Real Story, BBC World Service (March 17, 2023)
• "Freedom of Expression and Association," Charter: a Course podcast, Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights, University of Toronto.
• "The Ethics of Exile: in conversation with Ashwini Vasanthakumar," Conversations with IRiS podcast (February 11, 2022).
• "Do Victims have Obligations too?" Philosophy247 (interview with David Edmonds)