S M Masum Billah is Professor & Chairman of the Department of Law at Jagannath University, where he was formerly the Dean of Law Faculty from June 2022 – June 2024.
Professor Billah graduated from Rajshahi University with 1st Class 1st Position in LLB (Hons) and LLM. He holds a PhD from the Faculty of Law, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Dr Billah’s thesis examined the political nuances of land law and its relationship in perpetuating the poverty of the Bengal peasants. He is the honorary Director of Empowerment through Law of the Common People (ELCOP), a Dhaka-based law organisation working to advance the idea of rebellious lawyering.
Dr Billah has presented papers at international conferences at Mofid University, Iran (2010); Hong Kong University (2011); Istanbul Kultur University, Turkey (2012); University of New England (2014); World Bank, Washington (2015); University of Canterbury, New Zealand (2015); Thammasat University, Thailand (2017); China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL), Beijing (2018, 2019); National University Singapore (2018, 2019) and Kathmandu, Nepal (2019). He has published papers on property law, legal education, human rights and constitutionalism in scholarly journals.
Dr Billah was a visiting fellow at the South African Chair in Property Law, Stellenbosch University, South Africa (2019). He received the Turkish Government’s Burslari to accomplish a Post Doctoral Visting Fellowship at Ankara University’s National Center for the Sea and Maritime Law (DEHUKAM) from July 2022 to Nov 2022.
He is the author of Ainer Vab o Ovab (Palal, 2019), The Politics of Land Law: Poverty and Land Legislation in Bangladesh (University Press Limited, 2021) and Ain O Oboshishto (Printpukur, Chattogram, 2023). He co-edited the book (with David McQuoid-Mason and Tapas Kanti Baul), “Law, Human Rights and Legal Education: Essays in Honour of Professor Mizanur Rahman (Hakkani, Dhaka, 2024).
Teaching and Supervision Interests: Human Rights Law, Law and Religion, Constitutional Property Law, Comparative Constitutional Law and Law of the Sea
His area of interest includes human rights, law and language, land law and poverty, law and religion, law of the sea and constitutionalism in South Asia.
Research Project
Addressing Religious Sentiments: The Chance for a Religio-Secular Democracy
Focusing on Bangladesh, with additional perspectives from other South Asian jurisdictions, he will investigate the questions of what should be the suitable approach to incorporate religion within the constitutional framework and how states might deal with the excessive exposition of religious sentiments peacefully. He proposes to prepare a draft article for submission to a reputable journal and present his work at a seminar.
