I am a departmental lecturer in South Asian Studies with the Contemporary South Asian Studies Programme in the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies at the University of Oxford. My book project Seeking Supremacy, examines the emergence of Pakistan’s assertive judiciary, and was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022 in the Studies in Law and Society series. This project builds on my dissertation, titled Judging the Generals, which I completed at Brandeis University, and which was awarded the Edward S. Corwin Award for the best dissertation in public law by the American Political Science Association in 2019. I have also published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Comparative Politics and Democratization. My other research interests include judicial populism, legitimation of military regimes, comparative courts and constitutionalism, the formation of legal cultures, and South Asian law and politics.
I was previously appointed as the John and Daria Barry Postdoctoral Fellow in Constitutional Theory and Law with Trinity College and the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford (2020-2022). Prior to this, I was a Senior Teaching Fellow with the Department of Politics and International Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (2018-2020). Earlier I also worked at the Collective for Social Science Research and the Human Rights Commission in Karachi, Pakistan, and interned at the Asia Society and the American Civil Liberties Union in New York, and the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. I have a J.D from the Boston University School of Law and a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE), and History from the University of Pennsylvania.
You can contact me at: yasser.kureshi@area.ox.ac.uk
