Dr Jonathan Ercanbrack

Jonathan G. Ercanbrack is a reader of transnational financial law whose work investigates how legal authority, institutional structures, and market practices shape the governance of global finance—particularly in Islamic legal contexts and in the regulation of cross-border financial flows. His research sits at the intersection of comparative law, socio-legal studies, and financial regulation, offering a sustained examination of how legal norms are produced, adapted, and contested beyond and within the boundaries of the nation-state. 

His intellectual development is rooted in a multidisciplinary education. He completed a BA in German Language and Literature at the University of Utah, followed by a Vordiplom in German Studies and Economics at the Universität Heidelberg. He then earned an MSc in the Politics of Empire and Post-Imperialism at the London School of Economics, where he deepened his engagement with global political economy and institutional governance. His PhD in Law at SOAS University of London ultimately positioned him within the fields of legal pluralism and transnational financial regulation, shaping the direction of his later research. 

Ercanbrack’s first major monograph, The Transformation of Islamic Law in Global Financial Markets (Cambridge University Press, 2015), reconceptualises Islamic financial law as a transnational legal order, showing how global institutions and standard-setting bodies, rather than solely classically trained jurists, now play a decisive role in shaping Islamic commercial norms. This concern with institutional production of legal authority continues in his work on the standardisation of Islamic financial rules, where he analyses how regulatory agencies, market actors, and bureaucratic processes collectively construct modern Islamic legal frameworks. 

His co-authored volume Islamic Contract Law (Oxford University Press, 2024) advances his second major research programme: the systematic reinterpretation of Islamic contract doctrines through the analytical structure of modern contract law, making Islamic contractual principles clearer and more accessible for comparative scholars and practitioners. 

A further significant thread in his scholarship examines informal value-transfer systems, particularly hawala. His studies of hawala networks—across remittance corridors and within criminal proceedings—reveal how trust-based financial systems interact with, and sometimes circumvent, state regulatory structures. This line of inquiry underpins his extensive expert-witness work in cases involving transnational money laundering, where he provides analysis on informal financial practices, remittance mechanisms, and the socio-legal dynamics that shape cross-border illicit value flows. His expert testimony has contributed to the assessment of financial behaviour, cultural context, and the operation of non-formalised transfer systems in high profile international cases. 

His emerging research on blockchain technologies and smart contracts extends these themes into digital finance, exploring how new technologies challenge established regulatory frameworks and raise novel doctrinal, socio-legal and institutional questions. 

He is director of the Centre of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law (CIMEL), a member of the Board of Trustees of the Gesellschaft für Arabisches und Islamisches Recht (GAIR), a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Islamic and Ethical Finance, the UK hybrid Islamic Finance Group, the Global South Economic Crimes Network, the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE), the Society of Legal Scholars, a regular speaker at the Cambridge Symposium for Economic Crime, and the institutional host of the annual SOAS-QFC Islamic Finance Public Lecture and Workshop. He consults for leading law firms and law enforcement authorities such as the UK’s National Crime Agency.