Mallika Kaur

Mallika Kaur has committed her career to defending the rights of victim-survivors both in the United States and internationally. She has worked with domestic violence victim-survivors for over 15 years in a range of capacities, including as an emergency room crisis counselor, an expert witness, an educator, and an attorney.

Kaur was a Staff Attorney at CORA, the domestic violence agency for San Mateo County, California. She has also served as the Director of Programs for the initiative on Armed Conflict Resolution and People’s Rights, UC Berkeley. She has worked extensively in South Asia on human rights issues, including female feticide and family violence. Kaur writes regularly and for online and print media as well as academic publications; her work has been published in Foreign Policy, Washington Post, California Law Review among others. She regularly trains and presents on issues of cultural humility, elimination of bias, and negotiating trauma.

Mallika is the co-founder and Acting Executive Director of Sikh Family Center, the only Sikh American organization focused on gender-based violence. She has also served on several other nonprofit boards and working groups, including for the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence as well as the Asian Pacific Islander Institute on Gender Based Violence.

Kaur holds a Master in Public Policy from Harvard University. She received her Juris Doctorate in 2010 from UC Berkeley Law School, where she served on several boards, including of the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice. She has taught Negotiations at UC Hastings College of the Law. Since 2015, she teaches at UC Berkeley School of Law. Mallika is fluent in Punjabi, her mother tongue, as well as spoken Hindi and Urdu.

Selected Peer Reviewed and Invited Publications

• “An Exploratory Framework for Community-Led Research to Address Intimate Partner Violence: A Case Study of the Survivor-Centered Advocacy Project,” (Co-authored) Journal of Family Violence (Sept. 2018)
• Co-Author, “Access to Justice for Women: India’s Response to Sexual Violence in Conflict & Social Upheaval,” International Human Rights Law Clinic, UC Berkeley (Oct. 2015).
• “Anti-Violence Advocates and Law Enforcement: Is All Coordination Capitulation?” Family and Intimate Partner Violence Quarterly, Vol. 8(1) (Summer 2015).
• Co-Author, “Family Law Remedies for DV Across California: A Survey”, California Partnership to End Domestic Violence(Sept. 2013).
• “Finding Instructions from Punjab’s “Missing Girls”—Towards a Global Feminist Perspective on “Choice” in Abortion.” California Law Review, 97.3 (June 2009).
• Co-Author, "Coercive Confusion: The Nexus of Domestic Violence & Custody in the Time of COVID-19, " Domestic Violence Report (2020).