Biography of Dr. S M Masum Billah
Joining as an Assistant Professor in 2009, S M Masum Billah became a Professor in July 2022 and assumed the office of the Jagannath Law Dean since then.
Professor Billah graduated from Rajshahi University with 1st Class 1st Position in LLB (Hons) and LLM. He holds a PhD from the Faculty of Law, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Dr Billah’s thesis examined the political nuances of land law and its relationship in perpetuating the poverty of the Bengal peasants. He is the honorary Director of ELCOP Human Rights Summer School (HRSS), Dhaka. In this role, he closely associates with Professor Mizanur Rahman in championing the idea of rebellious lawyering, the art of advocacy and human rights teaching.
His area of interest includes human rights, law and language, land law and poverty, legal history and constitutionalism in South Asia.
Dr Billah has presented papers at international conferences at Mofid University, Iran (2010); Hong Kong University (2011); Istanbul Kultur University, Turkey (2012); University of New England (2014); World Bank, Washington (2015); University of Canterbury, New Zealand (2015); Thammasat University, Thailand (2017); China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL), Beijing (2018, 2019); National University Singapore (2018, 2019) and Kathmandu, Nepal (2019). He has published papers on property law, legal education, human rights and constitutionalism in scholarly journals.
Dr Billah was a visiting fellow at the South African Chair in Property Law, Stellenbosch University, South Africa (2019). He received the Turkish Government's Burslari to accomplish a Post Doctoral Visting Fellowship at Ankara University's National Center for the Sea and Maritime Law (DEHUKAM) from July 2022 to Nov 2022.
He has been a guest teacher at different private universities in Bangladesh.
Professor Billah is the author of Ainer Vab o Ovab (Palal, 2019),The Politics of Land Law: Poverty and Land Legislation in Bangladesh (University Press Limited, 2021) and Ain O Oboshishto (Printpukur, Chattogram, 2023).
Dr Billah regularly appears on TV talk shows and remains active in intellectually compelling debates on national and international issues.
Teaching and Supervision Interests:
(i) Jurisprudence and Legal Theory
(ii) Comparative Constitutional Law
(iii) Intellectual Property Law
(iv) Law of the Sea
(v) Land Law
(vi) Legal History (Bangladesh)
(vii) Human Rights Law
Email: billah_masum@law.jnu.ac.bd
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