Renisa Mawani

Renisa Mawani holds dual appointments as a Global Professorial Fellow in the School of Law at Queen Mary University of London (2022–2025) and as a Professor and Tier I Canada Research Chair in Colonial Legal Histories at the Department of Sociology, University of British Columbia. Her work critically examines colonial legal systems, maritime histories, and imperial governance through interdisciplinary lenses. Mawani’s research bridges law, history, and postcolonial studies, with a focus on how legal frameworks shaped racial, environmental, and oceanic dynamics in colonial contexts.

She earned her PhD from the University of Toronto’s Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies. At UBC, she affiliates with the Social Justice Institute, Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies Program, and Science and Technology Studies Program. Her scholarship includes edited volumes such as Animalia: An Anti-Imperial Bestiary for Our Times (2020) and Unmooring the Komagata Maru (2019), which critically analyze colonial legacies and imperial formations. Her recent work explores oceans as archives, maritime law, and climate justice.

Key research interests include colonial legal histories, postcolonial theory, and the intersections of law with race, environment, and space. Her awards include the Hilda Neatby Prize (2003) for groundbreaking work on gender and public health in Canadian legal history. Ongoing projects include Oceans as Archives (2025), a collaborative exploration of oceanic legal and cultural memory.

• Education: PhD, Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies, University of Toronto
• Affiliations: Social Justice Institute, Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies Program, Science and Technology Studies Program (UBC)
• Key Themes: Imperial legal systems, maritime governance, colonial biopolitics, climate law, Indigenous land rights