Fatima Dhanani

Dr Fatima Dhanani is an Associate Lecturer in Law at SOAS, University of London. Her research examines the relationship between legal pluralism, governance, civil society, and the production of social difference, with a regional focus on the Middle East. She recently completed her PhD at SOAS, which interrogates the paradoxes of legal pluralism in Lebanon and the way state and religious authorities co-construct forms of power, belonging, and legal vulnerability. 

She also serves as Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Legal Transformations in Muslim Societies, a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to contemporary legal change. She teaches Legal Systems of Asia and Africa which looks socio-legal theory, and Islamic legal traditions. She holds an MA in Islamic Law from SOAS.   

Her broader interests focus on pluralism as a legal and social framework, including how pluralist commitments are enacted in practice, how institutions negotiate diversity, and how individuals navigate the obligations and vulnerabilities that arise in plural legal orders. 

She is particularly interested in the concept of pluralism in action and the everyday encounters, legal processes, and interpretive practices through which pluralist ideals are tested, contested, and made meaningful. 

Her research also examines how pluralism shapes the experience of law, the governance of difference, and the possibilities for more equitable forms of co-presence in complex societies.

Legal pluralism, pluralism, legal systems in Muslim majority countries, pluriverse, Islamic constitutionalism, civil society, governance in Muslim contexts