Dr Jonathan Ercanbrack

Dr Jonathan G. Ercanbrack is a senior lecturer at SOAS University of London and the director of the Centre of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law (CIMEL). He is the author of The Transformation of Islamic Law in Global Financial Markets (Cambridge University Press 2015), which conceptualises the transformation of Islamic rules and principles in global financial markets as a form of transnational law. In 2024, he co-authored Islamic Contract Law (OUP 2024), which provides a modern, contract law framed account of Islamic contractual rules and principles. He has published a number of peer reviewed journal articles including The Standardization of Islamic Financial Law: Lawmaking in Global Financial Markets, which Oxford University Press editors selected as one of the best comparative law journal articles in 2021. Dr Ercanbrack’s current research focusses on the socio-economic and comparative contractual implications of blockchain and smart contract technologies.

He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Gesellschaft für Arabisches und Islamisches Recht (GAIR), a member of 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 regularly consults for leading law firms as well as public authorities such as the UK’s National Crime Agency. 

Dr Ercanbrack was educated at the University of Utah (B.A. German language and literature), the Universität Heidelberg (Vordiplom, Germanistik and Economics), the London School of Economics (MSc, Politics of Empire and Post Imperialism) and the SOAS University of London (PhD, Law). He teaches or has taught Transnational Law, Finance and Technology, English Contract Law, the Legal Aspects of Islamic Finance and English Commercial Law. He is proficient in German, has an upper-intermediate level in Modern Standard Arabic and is conversant in Italian.