• Vita

    Dr Agnes Meroka holds a PhD in Law from the University of Warwick, School of Law; an LLM in International Development Law and Human Rights with Distinction from the University of Warwick School of Law; and an LLB from the University of Nairobi, Faculty of Law. She is an advocate of the High Court of Kenya and holds a Postgraduate Diploma from the Kenya School of Law. She is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Nairobi, Faculty of Law, where her areas of specialization are: Women’s Law; Law and Development, Human Rights Law, Disability Rights Law, and Property Law. She is also a Senior Researcher and Policy Advocacy Lead at the African Women’s Studies Center. She also serves on the Board of the Africa Coordinating Center for the Abandonment of FGM. She has extensive experience in conducting field research and has published widely in her areas of specialization.

  • Research Project

    Legal Unity and Pluralism in Promoting Women’s Human Rights in Kenya

    Using feminist research methods, the project will assess how legal pluralism plays out in various aspects of women’s lived experiences, including personal law issues of marriage, divorce and child custody; property rights; employment and entrepreneurship.  The project will also rely on existing data sets from institutions to which the researcher is affiliated, which have been collected over a period of time and which are availed to the researcher for analysis using feminist approaches. Through this feminist analysis of existing data sets, the voices of women will be amplified and their stories about the plurality and centrality of law will be given prominence. Finally, the project will use a historical approach to study the development and evolution of Kenya’s legal system, with a specific focus on how women’s human rights have been canvassed in plural legal contexts. Through this, it will demonstrate varying approaches and interventions aimed at promoting women’s human rights through law.

  • Selected Publications

    Agnes Meroka-Mutua, “Women’s Knowledge and Experiences in Overcoming Challenges Faced by Women’s Enterprises in Accessing Credit in Kenya” in Wanjiku Kabira et al (ed) African Feminist Epistemology, 2025.

    Agnes Meroka-Mutua, “Kenya’s Legal Responses to Gender Based Violence: Implications for Women in the Context of Family” East African Law Journal, Special Issue on Family Law, 2025.

    Agnes Meroka-Mutua, “Retelling the Experiences of African Women with Female Genital Mutilation through an African Feminist Lens,” in S. Nabaneh, Limits of Criminalisation of Female Genital Mutilation in Africa, Pretoria University Law Press, 2025.

    Agnes Meroka-Mutua, “From Relegation to Elevation: The Place of Customary Marriages in Kenya’s Matrimonial Law” Onati Socio-Legal Series, 2024. DOI: 10.35295/osls.iisl.1966

    Agnes Meroka-Mutua, “A History Without Women: The Emergence and Development of Subaltern Ideology on Land in Kenya,” Feminist Legal Studies, 2022. 10.1007/s10691-022-09488-4

    Agnes Meroka-Mutua, Daniel Mwanga, Susan L. Ostermann, Josephine Wouango. “Coercion versus Facilitation: Context and the Implementation of Anti-FGM/C Law.” 55(4/2021) Law & Society Review 1–27.