Dr. Roopa Madhav holds a PhD in Law from SOAS, University of London, an LL.M (Public Service Lawyering) from New York University and a B.A.LL.B (Hons) from National Law School of India University, Bangalore. Post her graduation in 1993, she practised law in the fields of labour law, service law, property law, commercial law and family law before the courts in Mumbai and Bangalore. She was a Research Fellow at the International Environmental Law Research Centre, working on a project mapping water law reforms in the country. She has been an Associate Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and visiting faculty at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore and Tamil Nadu National Law University.

She was a member of two working groups of the planning commission for the 12th plan focussed on Urban and Industrial Water and drafting a Model Groundwater Bill and also a member of the planning commission sub-group set up to draft a model bill for a State Water Regulatory System. She is co-editor of Water Law for the Twenty-First Century – National and International Aspects of Water Law Reform in India, Abingdon: Routledge, 2009 and Water Governance in Motion: Towards Socially and Environmentally Sustainable Water Laws 2010, New Delhi: Cambridge.  She is also a member, editorial board of the online peer reviewed LEAD Journal (also known as the Law, Environment and Development Journal) - —a joint publication of SOAS–University of London and International Environmental Law Research Centre (IELRC), Geneva. 

She is also a consultant with the Law Programme of Women in the Informal Economy, Globalising and Organising (WIEGO) and is currently working on a co-edited book project (along with Dr. Thomas Coggin, University of Witwatersrand) - a collaborative effort between WIEGO (Law Programme) and International Research Group on Law and Urban Space (IRGLUS) - to be published by Routledge in 2023 

Her research interests include environmental law, regulatory governance, labour law and human rights.