Nehal Patel

Nehal Patel is a licensed attorney and an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice and Sociology at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Dr. Patel has begun a series of undertakings called the Mindful Law Project, which aims to develop social & legal thought through the thought of Gandhi and the insights of meditative & contemplative traditions. His current projects involve applications of Gandhi’s thought to environmental justice and to LGBTQ civil rights. His projects further the inclusion of non-western thought in academic inquiry & the liberal arts. Currently, he is interested in connecting recent research on mindfulness meditation & consciousness to social & legal theory. He also is interested in multi-method scholarship and has used several research methodologies: experimental, quantitative, qualitative interview, document/text & film analysis, and case method.