Ms Bhumika Billa

Email

bb584@cam.ac.uk

Profile Links

Education CV

Education:

PhD in Law, Peterhouse College, University of Cambridge (2021-present)
LLM, St Edmund's College, University of Cambridge (2019-20)
BA LLB, Vivekananda School of Law and Legal Studies, GGSIP University (2013-18)

Scholarships and Prizes:

Kenneth Law Essay Prize, for first-year paper titled ‘Towards an Information Theory of Law’, Peterhouse College, University of Cambridge (2022)
Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Trust Cambridge International Scholarship, full-scholarship towards PhD, University of Cambridge (2021)
St Edmund’s College Prize, for achieving first class in LL.M. examinations, St Edmund's College, University of Cambridge (2020)
Cambridge Trust Scholarship, partial scholarship towards LL.M., University of Cambridge (2019)
Cornelia Sorabji Law Scholarship, partial scholarship towards BCL, University of Oxford (offered) (2019)
University Gold Medal, GGSIP University for overall first rank in B.A. LL.B. across 8 colleges (2018)

Select Experience:

Research Assistant, Centre for Business Research, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge (2020-present)
Research Sprint Participant (speculative fiction track), Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University (Fall 2022)
Project Manager, Cambridge Law Faculty Pro Bono Project, University of Cambridge (2021-22)
General Editor, Cambridge International Law Journal (2019-20)
Legal Research Fellow, Centre for WTO Studies, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Delhi (2018-2019)
Principal Associate and Teaching Assistant, The Negotiation Academy (2017-19)

Teaching Experience:

‘Law, Technology, Society', LL.M. Workshops for the Economics of Law and Regulation course, Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge (2020-22)
‘Inequality and Law’, LL.M. Workshops for the Economics of Law and Regulation course, Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge (2020-22)

Fields of research

Law and Political Economy, Law and Society, Law and Technology, Futures of Work, Gender, Creative Methods

Research centres and interest groups

Centre for Business Research (CBR)

Law as code and power: towards an information theory of law

Summary

My first-year paper is an introduction to what I call the 'information theory of law'. It applies an external frame, C.E. Shannon’s information (or communication) theory, to law based on its positioning as a social system in Niklas Luhmann’s terms. Shannon’s frame and its shortcomings reveal how law interacts and co-evolves with its environment. By inquiring into the nature of law as an information system and how it encodes and shapes our identities (with a special focus on gender), I have arrived at a three-pronged conclusion. Law is a type of social information system that is exclusive, reflexive, and adaptive. From here on, I aim to test these claims through a combination of qualitative empirical research and creative practise-led/based methods.