Dr. Rajan Khatiwoda is the Chief Scientific Documentation Coordinator in the Nepal Heritage Documentation Project (NHDP) at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (HAdW). Khatiwoda studied Classical Indology at Heidelberg University, from where he received his PhD in 2017. His dissertation deals with the formation and enforcement of the Mulukī Ain, Nepal’s first legal code promulgated in 1854. From 2013 to 2016, he was part of the Cluster´s Project A14 "Transcultural Legal Flows in 18th- and 19th-Century South Asia." Since 2014, Khatiwoda is research associate at the South Asian Institute, Heidelberg University, and the Research Unit "Documents on the History of Religion and Law of Pre-modern Nepal," Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Previously, he worked as a research assistant and cataloguer for the Nepalese-German Manuscript Cataloguing Project (NGMCP) and the Nepal Research Centre (NRC) in Kathmandu for nine years (2004–2013). His recent publications include:
2024: Homicide Law in 19th-Century Nepal: A Study of the Mulukī Ains and Legal Documents
2021: The Mulukī Ain of 1854: Nepal’s First Legal Code.

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