Dr Jonathan Ercanbrack

I am a senior lecturer in transnational financial law at SOAS, University of London, where I am also chair of the Centre of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law (CIMEL).

I began my career in political roles for the Korean Embassy and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (Foundation) in Washington, D.C. but eventually gravitated to finance and co-founded Naewa Advisory, a private equity advisory company.

I hold an MSc degree from the London School of Economics where I specialised in the political economy of the Middle East; a Vordiplom in economics from the University of Heidelberg; and a Bachelor of Arts in German from the University of Utah. In 2012, I was appointed as lecturer in the law of Islamic finance at SOAS, and, in 2012, I completed a PhD in law at SOAS in which I focused on the facilitation, regulation and adjudication of Islamic finance in the United Kingdom.

At SOAS, I have developed an international reputation as a leading researcher and author in the field of Islamic financial law, transnational financial law, and the contractual and financial laws of Arab Gulf States. My most recent book, The Transformation of Islamic Law in Global Financial Markets (Cambridge University Press 2015) dealt with the transformation of these principles in global financial markets. The book has been widely praised, most recently in the highly ranked Modern Law Review. In 2021, Oxford University Press rated my article on the Standardization of Islamic Financial Law one of the best comparative law articles published in that year. In 2023, I will publish a second monograph, Islamic Contract Law, with Oxford University Press.

Since 2018, I am the chair and co-organizer of the SOAS-QFC Public Lecture and Workshop on Islamic Finance, which is an annual event that began at Harvard Law School and the LSE prior to coming to SOAS. I am the recipient of a Qatar Financial Centre Authority grant for the purposes of hosting these events. In 2019, I was made a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. In 2023, I was appointed a member of the UK Islamic Finance / Halal Economy Working Group.

Since 2012, I serve the English court as an expert witness in money laundering, offshore finance, payment systems and informal value transfer related cases. The jurisdictional background of cases has ranged from Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Dubai, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Hong Kong, Azerbaijan to the United Kingdom.

Since 2012, I teach or have taught English contract law, the law of Islamic finance, transnational law, finance and technology and English commercial law.

I am fluent in German, proficient in Arabic and conversational in French, Spanish and Italian.