Asif is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the EW Barker Centre for Law and Business (EWBCLB), Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore (NUS). He previously served as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Auckland Business School under the mentorship of Professor Susan Watson. He has also briefly worked as a Post-Doctoral Global Fellow at FGV Law School, São Paulo, Brazil, under the supervision of Professor Mariana Pargendler—now a Beneficial Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Prior to that, Asif worked as a Researcher in the International Arbitration practice of the US law firm WilmerHale in London, UK. For over two years, he was a Lecturer in Law in Bangladesh and concurrently served as a Research Associate in a joint research project of the Transnational Law Institute at King’s College London.
Asif earned his PhD in Corporate Law with Magna cum laude (Distinction) from Humboldt University of Berlin under the supervision of Professor Stefan Grundmann. His doctoral studies were fully funded by a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Scholarship. He was a Visiting PhD Researcher at the University of Oxford during Hilary and Trinity Terms 2022. He completed the Barrister Training Course (BTC) with Distinction at BPP University, UK, partially funded by the BPP Career Commitment Scholarship, and was subsequently Called to the Bar of England and Wales as a barrister of The Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn. Earlier, he completed his LLM in International Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation at the University of Warwick, UK, and obtained his qualifying law degree (QLD) from Northumbria University, UK.
Asif’s research interests span corporate law and corporate governance from transnational and comparative perspectives, including company law, legal transplants, and international arbitration. He is particularly interested in examining corporate law in the Global South and the Global North, drawing comparisons where appropriate. His work has appeared in several reputable peer-reviewed international legal journals, including Arbitration International (Oxford University Press), American Review of International Arbitration (Columbia Law School’s flagship international arbitration journal), Hong Kong Law Journal (Sweet & Maxwell), and Industrial Law Journal, among others. His research monograph, Corporate Governance Transplants in South Asia: Are Legal Transplants Viable? (De Gruyter, 2025), has been published by De Gruyter Brill in the De Gruyter European International Private, Banking and Commercial Law (EIW) series.
