Aarushi Shah (she/her) is a PhD candidate in Sociomedical Sciences and Anthropology at Columbia University. Her dissertation is an ethnography of the U.S. criminal legal response to intimate partner violence. Set in a domestic violence court, it follows the broader network of legal and therapeutic actors who adjudicate these cases, including court-mandated rehabilitative programs for people accused or convicted of abuse. The project examines how contested understandings of violence are translated into routine case dispositions, rehabilitative mandates, and therapeutic interventions within the criminal legal system.

Drawing on courtroom observation, archival analysis, and in-depth interviews with legal actors, defendants, program staff, and advocates, the dissertation traces how alternatives to incarceration, intervention mandates, and discretionary plea negotiations shape the everyday meaning of accountability in these cases. Situating domestic violence courts alongside the parallel architecture of drug and mental health courts, Aarushi examines the uneven fit between intimate partner violence and the rehabilitative and problem-solving frameworks increasingly adopted across the criminal legal system. Her work engages scholarship on street-level bureaucracy, legal social construction, therapeutic jurisprudence, and feminist theories of visibility, interpretation, and evidence.

Aarushi is particularly interested in ethnography as a method for examining how institutional practices reproduce social inequalities through ordinary bureaucratic routines and discretionary decision-making. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF GRFP), the National Institutes of Health (T32 in Gender, Sexuality and Health), and the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy. Before beginning her doctoral work, she received her BA in Social Anthropology and Global Health from Harvard College.